While the president is wandering around the site of the annual G-7 meeting in the French Alps, with plenty of security around to make sure he doesn’t get too far off track, the question arises of how dangerous the current world situation is, compared to other major crises in the last half century or more.
Certainly, we’ve never had a situation quite like the present, where the president of the most powerful nation in the world is so demonstrably off base and hurtful to the nation he purports to lead. But the best experts also contend at this point the threat is not as critical as it has been at points in our past because everyone now knows just how clinically insane Trump is, and is making accommodations for that.
It doesn’t mean that those around him are any wiser, but that even they can see a train wreck when one arrives at their feet, enough at least to say, “Nope.”
That goes for the entire world, too. Any confidence that Putin might have had in a cavalier deployment of his man in Washington has vanished as he is fighting for his political life in the losing war with Ukraine and his swagger is gone.
Sit down with the top U.S. foreign intelligence figures these days, and the recollections of much riskier times past go to two seminal events in our post World War II history, the Cuban missile crisis and, more seriously, a U.S. military exercise called the Able Archer operation of November 1983, when all the Cold War alarm bells went off and the world faced a very real threat of a thermonuclear holocaust.
There has been little authoritative writing about the Able Archer exercise, and much of what exists has appeared only in recent years. In an article published in Smithsonian Magazine, Francine Uenuma wrote, “Fearful that the Able Archer 83 exercise was a cover for a NATO nuclear strike, the U.S.S.R. readied its own weapons for launch.” The article appeared on April 27, 2022.
Able Archer 83 was a NATO military command-post exercise conducted in November 1983 as part of the annual Able Archer series. It simulated a period of heightened nuclear tensions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact and later became notable because some analysts believe the Soviet Union may have mistaken the exercise for preparations for an actual nuclear attack.
Like previous Able Archer exercises, its purpose was to simulate the escalation of a conflict, culminating in a scenario in which U.S. and NATO forces reached DEFCON 1 and prepared for a coordinated nuclear response.
The five day exercise, which began on November 7, 1983, introduced several new elements not seen in previous years, including a new, unique format of coded communication, radio silences, and the participation of heads of government. This increase in realism, combined with tense relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and the anticipated arrival of Pershing II nuclear missiles in Europe, led some members of the Soviet Politburo and military to believe that Able Archer 83 was a ruse of war, obscuring preparations for a genuine nuclear first strike.
In response, the Soviet Union readied their nuclear forces and placed air units in East Germany and Poland on alert. The Soviet 4th Air Army began loading nuclear warheads onto combat planes in preparation for war.The apparent threat of nuclear war ended when U.S. Lieutenant General Leonard H. Perroots advised against responding to the Warsaw Pact military activity, which ended with the conclusion of the exercise on November 11.
The exercise attracted public attention in 2015 when the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board’s 1990 report on the exercise was declassified. Some scholars have argued that Able Archer 83 was one of the times when the world has come closest to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The declassification of related documents in 2021 supported this notion.
What were you doing that week?
