Able Archer 83 The Cold War, and Lessons for the Current Iran Crisis Part 3

or 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.

The Grandees of the Soviet Union—driven by the paranoid delusions of the KGB—were convinced that NATO and the Americans would have to strike a telling blow in 1983. They knew that the downing of the Korean airliner—KAL-007—was the result of pilot error on the part of both pilots: the Korean plane did stray into Soviet airspace, but quite innocently. The Soviet pilot reacted reflexively to the incursion and shot it down rather than to use rational judgment. The Soviet Union was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that a retaliatory attack was eminent.

The British,—however—had an edge that allowed them to make rational judgments. They had a long-term ideological double agent within the London rezidentura, Oleg Gordievsky, who had risen to the top ranks of the KGB in England. His information had been 100% reliable in the past. He reported to his British handlers that Moscow Center had sent its residencies a flash telegram on November 8 reporting a massively increased alert status on American bases and frantically asking for further information regarding an American first strike. That information was incorrect; Gordievsky and his British handlers knew it was wrong; but the top Soviets, including the KGB did not want to hear otherwise. They were as slavish to their paranoid communist ideology as the Iranian leaders are to their intense religious beliefs.

Gordievsky and a few other senior KGB leaders tried to talk reason to their leaders but were reprimanded for giving their opinion instead of simply reporting the facts. The facts told the top Russian leaders that an attack was imminent, and that was that. In the current era, the “facts” tell the Ayatollahs that a nuclear attack by America is looming.

Able Archer-83 exercises were scheduled to begin on November 7, 1983 and to be conducted in much the same way as in the many previous years of the exercises. NATO, SHAPE [Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe], and the U.S. military knew that the purpose of the exercise in 1893 was to simulate a period of conflict escalation, culminating in the U.S. military attaining a simulated DEFCON 1 coordinated nuclear attack. It was to last five days. Despite Gordievsky’s intel, they could not fully appreciate the mindset of the Russians and that Able Archer-83 would bring the world to the brink—the closest it had ever been to nuclear holocaust.

The Soviet Union believed that its only chance of surviving the coming NATO strike was to preempt it. So, the U.S.S.R. readied its massive nuclear arsenal. The CIA reported activity in the Soviet Baltic Military Districts and in its satellite, Czechoslovakia. Further the CIA’s information determined that nuclear-capable aircraft in Poland and East Germany were placed on full alert status, including the nuclear strike forces. The DCIA and top ranking agents strongly suspected that Soviet ICBM silos—which were easily readied and difficult for the United States to detect—were also prepared for a launch.

The Soviets’ conclusions were entirely wrong, but the reasoning behind those conclusions were based on objective analysis of the information available to them from its spies. The stage was rapidly being set for the nuclear holocaust that the entire world had been fearing since the Cold War began.

I chose to use a pseudonym for personal reasons. I’m a retired neurosurgeon living in a rural paradise and am at rest from the turbulent life of my profession. I lived in an era when resident trainees worked 120 hours a week–a form of bondage no longer permitted by law. I served as a Navy Seabee general surgeon during the unpleasantness in Viet Nam, and spent the remainder of my ten-year service as a neurosurgeon in a major naval regional medical center. I’ve lived in every section of the country, saw all the inhumanity of man to man, practiced in private settings large and small, the military, academia, and as a medical humanitarian in the Third World.

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