"Able Archer" and the Soviet-American conflict of 1983

[InuYasha]

In November 1983, NATO's largest military exercise of the Cold War era, Able Archer 83, took place.

During Able Archer 83, NATO forces practiced sequentially moving troops into combat readiness levels from DEFCON 5 (peacetime) to DEFCON 1 (war). Since each level of combat readiness was practiced sequentially, KGB informants perceived them as a real combat alert. According to intelligence information, NATO military doctrine stated: "Operational readiness No. 1 is declared when there are obvious prerequisites for conducting a military operation. When it is clearly established that war is inevitable and can begin at any moment."

According to Western historians, the leadership of the Soviet Union believed that the only chance to withstand a NATO attack was to get ahead of it. In this regard, the CIA noted increased activity in the Baltic military district, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, and in the locations of nuclear-armed aircraft carriers in the Polish People's Republic and the GDR: "all troops were put on alert, nuclear weapons storage facilities were opened."

The scenario published by NATO details a hypothetical scenario for Exercise Able Archer, which was used by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, DC, and the UK Ministry of Defence in London. The war game would have involved Force Blue, representing NATO, and Force Orange, representing the Warsaw Pact. The scenario involved proxy conflicts escalating in Syria, South Yemen and Iran after Yugoslavia defected to the Blue bloc and Orange invaded Finland, Norway and West Germany.

Even modern historians admit that 1983 was much closer to a nuclear war than even the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. However, they officially deny the fact of a conflict between NATO and Warsaw Pact countries, which happened in November 1983.

[InuYasha]

The nuclear paranoia of the autumn of 1983 reached its peak in November, when the NATO war game Able Archer 83 began. The military planned to practice plans for a nuclear war and, in addition, wanted to test interaction at various stages of combat readiness under DEFCON.

The game did not involve troops - in fact, it was a practice of communication interaction between NATO headquarters: according to the game scenario, a nuclear conflict began due to a political crisis in Europe, which escalated into a war with the Warsaw Pact countries.
But it was hard to imagine a more inappropriate time for the start of secret war games: a week before, the United States invaded Grenada, and by the end of the month, American Pershing ballistic missiles were planned to be deployed in Western Europe.

Moscow believed that everything that was happening was part of something bigger, most likely - preparations for a nuclear strike on the USSR. Analysts involved in Operation RYAN reported that the number of encrypted messages between the US and UK had increased several-fold; the fact that both President Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were taking part in the game also raised concerns. Each day of the war game in the USSR was perceived with increasing tension; information about the increase in the DEFCON combat readiness level up to the maximum was especially alarming. On November 9, two days before the end of the exercises, Soviet residents abroad received instructions to identify US plans to launch a preemptive strike; Soviet troops were transferred to a state of heightened combat readiness.

(From the article: "1983 - the peak of the nuclear threat" https://batenka.ru/protection/war/nuclear-threat-1983/).

Dr Gregory Pedlow, a historian, explains the war game:

The exercise scenario began with Orange (the hypothetical opponent) opening hostilities in all regions of ACE [Allied Command Europe] on 4 November (three days before the start of the exercise) and Blue (NATO) declaring a general alert. Orange initiated the use of chemical weapons on 6 November and by the end of that day had used such weapons throughout ACE. All of these events had taken place prior to the start of the exercise and were simply part of the written scenario. There had thus been three days of fighting and a deteriorating situation prior to the start of the exercise. This was desired because—as previously stated—the purpose of the exercise was to test procedures for transitioning from conventional to nuclear operations. As a result of Orange advance, its persistent use of chemical weapons, and its clear intentions to rapidly commit second echelon forces, SACEUR requested political guidance on the use of nuclear weapons early on Day 1 of the exercise (7 November 1983).

Exercise scenario: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEB ... 20NATO.pdf

[InuYasha]

Does anyone here remember November 4, 1983?

I have talked to people who were there that day. And they have mostly been able to overcome the mental barrier and recall specific moments of the Soviet-American escalation. I have heard claims:

1. That the US allies (probably the Israelis) shot down 24 or 27 Soviet planes;
2. That there was fear due to the deployment of Pershing missiles in Western Europe and some Reagan Space Program (perhaps a reference to Star Wars/Strategic Defense Initiative?);
3. That the world was "on the brink of nuclear war", with one person assessing the Soviet-American war of 1983 as "quite likely to have happened";
4. That there was some battle, the largest since WWII, that took place in the second half of 1983;
5. The general mood of depression and fear of imminent tragedy.

In general, people living in 1983 treated the theory as "interesting" and "having a right to exist".

This clearly cannot be attributed to a simple "clouding of consciousness", "Cotard syndrome" or something similar. Apparently, the Soviet-American war took place on November 4, 1983. For a number of reasons that I will mention later, this fact was repressed from the collective memory. Historians, publicists and journalists have reluctantly admitted only recently that this was the closest moment to Mutually Assured Destruction.

[InuYasha]

After his inauguration, Reagan promised to “rearm” America by doubling the defense budget within two years. He authorized development of the B-1 bomber and the neutron bomb, ordered the deployment of 3,000 more nuclear warheads, and accelerated development of the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile and the B-2 stealth bomber. The plans for using this arsenal were even more provocative. In May 1982, The New York Times revealed a confidential Pentagon document that implied that the United States should be able to fight a nuclear war for six months, with breaks to reload silos for new salvos, and to conserve enough warheads for a second war. In October 1982, The Los Angeles Times reported that Reagan had signed an executive order to ensure American victory in a nuclear war. Again, “victory” was a fiction, but Reagan did not necessarily realize it.

In 1982, he asked Congress to appropriate $4.3 billion for civil defense to protect millions of Americans in the event of a nuclear attack. On March 23, 1983, in his famous “Star Wars” televised address, he called for a missile defense system that would make nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” Reagan emphasized that he wanted to “save lives,” but an effective missile defense would leave the USSR vulnerable to an American attack. This led some Soviet strategists to conclude that the United States might be preparing for war.

During this period, former KGB chief Yuri Andropov became the Soviet General Secretary. Although he was often considered paranoid, a recently declassified CIA psychological profile says that he was “an intelligent man (…) who probably knows more about foreign affairs and some domestic issues than any Soviet leader since Lenin.” Only this intelligent man was convinced that he might have to start a nuclear war to save his country. He tried to convey this concern to the Americans: in a conversation with Averell Harriman (the former Roosevelt ambassador whom Reagan sent to find out Soviet intentions), he mentioned the danger of a nuclear conflict four times. Instead of reassuring the Soviets, the Reagan administration relentlessly used the military to unsettle them. For example, American ships approached the Soviet coast and launched an aircraft toward their airspace, which turned back at the last moment. In response, the Soviets were forced to launch their own aircraft. According to once-classified NSA documents, “these actions were intended to create paranoia, and they succeeded.”

The climax came in April and May 1983, when three American carrier groups of 40 ships conducted large-scale exercises in the Pacific to practice all-out war with the Soviets. The ships even made practice runs to fire on Soviet targets in the Kuril Islands. The incident sparked a diplomatic row, and Andropov issued a shoot-to-kill order if American forces entered Soviet territory again. The order had dire consequences.

In the early morning of September 1, 1983, Soviet radar picked up what it believed to be a spy plane intruding into Soviet airspace. “Given the paranoia that had prevailed since April, it was simply unthinkable to allow the intrusion to go unanswered,” the NSA document noted. An Su-15 fighter jet was dispatched to intercept the intruder. Unfortunately, the “spy plane” turned out to be a commercial Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 flying from New York to Seoul. All 269 people on board were killed. Among them were 62 Americans, including one lawmaker, and 22 children under the age of 12. Reagan called the incident “barbaric.” However, the accusation that the Soviets killed hundreds of civilians contradicts American intelligence reports. According to the NSA (a document recently published), the USSR had made a sincere mistake. "It was Reagan's entourage who insisted on saying that the USSR could not have mistaken the Boeing 747" for a spy plane. The alternative explanation was even more frightening.