For my friends and foes, I have a disclaimer about this set of postings. I am squarely in the middle politically, religiously, and socially. I have no axes to grind. However, I do heartily believe in the truth or my version of it based on research for as objective a point of view as is possible. The facts are the facts in this work you are about to read, but the opinions are mine. In short, I believe the Able-archer-83 saga was a harbinger of things to come, and we ignore the lesson as it may apply to the current escalation of belligerence occurring between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran at our peril. I pray for the leaders involved that no one inadvertently pulls the atomic trigger.
What could events of 1983 have in common with the threats posed in 2019? The correlation is painfully similar and begs study by the belligerents in the current crisis. Yes, crisis. And by us who may become the cannon fodder.
Let us consider the background leading up to the crisis posed by the Able Archer-83 exercise. An entire generation of the world lived through the anxiety of the Cold War with the threat of achievable mutual destruction of the United States of America and its allies, and the Soviet Union and the Warsaw pact nations. Americans and most of the rest of the world trusted that the Americans were entirely rational people, keepers and protectors of nuclear power, and would never launch a pre-emptive strike against the U.S.S.R. and its satellites.
However, fairly recent research has revealed that the Soviets did not share that belief and opinion in the least degree. The most powerful leaders of the U.S.S.R.—the men with their fingers on the nuclear buttons—were paranoid to the nth degree and were quite frankly afraid of the United States and its intentions. That fire of that paranoia was stoked by the inflammatory rhetoric of then President Ronald Reagan. From the start of Reagan’s presidency, his administrated adopted a bellicose stance—fueled by his far-right conservative base—toward communism and the Soviet Union—one that favored serious constraints being imposed Soviet strategic and global military capabilities. The administration’s rigorous focus on this objective resulted in the largest peacetime military buildup in the history of the United States, a development that did not go unnoticed by the KGB and the Politburo.
Reagan also ushered in major escalation in the rhetoric of the Cold War. The president frequently referred to the Warsaw Pact nations as the “evil empire.” On June 8, 1982, Reagan, in a speech to the British House of Commons, the president declared “… Freedom and democracy will leave Marxism and Leninism on the ash heap of history.” The Soviets took that entirely literally as the working intention of America.
The KGB and governmental leaders began to see preparation for a massive nuclear strike in almost every action and reaction of the U.S. and its allies. They even had a name for it: RYaN [a surprise nuclear attack in peacetime]. From the Soviet’s perspective, war preparations were escalating by the Americans. On March 23, 1983, President Reagan announced the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative—popularly called “Star Wars.” It was one of the most ambitious and controversial components of Reagan’s strategy, and it heightened Soviet fears to the level of frank paranoia, even to the delusionary level, especially among the spy ranks of KGB senior officers. While Reagan portrayed the initiative as a safety net against nuclear war, a construct accepted by the majority of Americans, the leaders in the Soviet Union viewed it as a definitive departure from the relative weapons parity of détente and an escalation of the arms race into space. Yuri Andropov—former director of the KGB who had become General Secretary following Brezhnev’s death in November 1982—criticized Reagan for “inventing new plans on how to unleash a nuclear war in the best way, with the hope of winning it.”
The Russian military—and especially the upper echelons of its intelligence services—believed their worst fears about the United States without a scintilla of doubt, and they began to take measures to protect the motherland and its people; they even debated pre-emptive strikes, just as they presumed America was planning.
Russia’s equipment and its maintenance was often poorly designed and tested and inadequately maintained. A near-catastrophe occurred as a result. On September 1, 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet interceptor over the Sea of Japan near Moneron Island—just west of Sakhalin island—while flying over prohibited Soviet airspace. All 269 passengers and crew aboard were killed, including Congressman Larry McDonald, a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives from Georgia and President of the anti-communist John Birch Society—a co-believer in the near divine inspiration of the conservative movement with President Reagan. The world held its breath.
