Plutarch's Ghost

Describing the Cold War to someone who did not grow up during it is a bit odd.  It wasn’t a “hot” war, such as the Second World War was, nor was it like Iraq or Afghanistan.  It did occasionally flare up in certain places, like Korea or Vietnam, but it never got into an all-out military action.  It was war of rhetoric, economics, occasional threat-behavior, and when things did get ornery, grisly proxy wars in Third World locations. But it was not a war of bullets and bombs between the chief antagonists.  It is also hard to describe it to someone too young to have lived through it since it was fought against an enemy that hasn’t existed for over two decades: the Soviet Union (USSR).  It is further difficult to describe, given the fact that the system employed by the USSR (communism) has ceased to be utilized as a means of governance and economics in all but the smallest corners of the planet, such as Cuba and North Korea.  But unlike even the First or Second World Wars, this “war” was the only one that brought the world to within hours of total annihilation, not once, but twice.The Cuban Missile Crisis has been well-documented, an event that has berthed countless books, movies, and commentary.  However, nearly twenty-one years later, an event that was arguably as dangerous and provocative occurred, but hasn’t been as remotely documented as the aforementioned Cuban affair. It started as a mere military exercise amongst the forces of NATO and almost ended as a nuclear war.  The zeitgeist of the times, exacerbated by the hyper-paranoid personalities of the Soviet side (Yuri Andropov) and the harsh rhetoric emanating from the American (Ronald Reagan), contributed to a poisonous atmosphere that nearly blundered the world into nuclear annihilation.  This is the story of Able Archer 83.

Yuri Andropov

Yuri Andropov assumed the Soviet premiership in November, 1982, following the death of Leonid Brezhnev.  He was 68, his ascension to the highest office in the USSR being the fulfillment of his lifelong ambitions.  In the West, he was perceived as a liberal reformer–a rather strange characterization, given his instrumental role in the violent suppression of the Hungarians in 1956 (he was USSR ambassador to Hungary and was an eyewitness to the uprising) and the Czechoslovakians in 1968. He was head of the KGB from 1967 to his assumption of the Soviet premiership in 1982.  A man thoroughly schooled in the black arts of espionage, skullduggery and assassinations (Andropov was rumored to have been behind the dispatch of two political rivals in the years leading up to his grabbing the top spot), he was also man with a reputation for incorruptibility. Otherwise, he was “bitter, frightened and deeply pessimistic.” [1] Additionally, he attained power at a very tense moment in Soviet history.  In Poland, the Solidarity labor movement had gained steam and was causing headaches for Polish premier, Wojciech Jaruzelski, and by extension, the Soviets.  To compound matters, there was “that insolent priest” (to purloin a phrase from Henry II of England, another monarch given headaches by an earlier, upstart clergyman, Thomas Beckett) in Rome, Pope John Paul II, who Andropov characterized as “hold(ing) extreme anti-Communist views…he has criticized the way in which State agencies of the People’s Republic function [Poland].”[2] When Ronald Reagan, on assuming the United States presidency in January 1981, wrote to General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev proposing a meeting to discuss nuclear weapons, it was Yuri Andropov that told Premier Leonid Brezhnev that it was “a phony gesture” and a waste of time [3].  Deeply unhealthy, he was also suffering from kidney problems; his dialysis treatments, received twice a week, left him in a state of exhaustion four out of seven days.

RYAN, PSYOPS, Flight 007

In May of 1981, Andropov called a top-secret meeting of all the top Soviet KGB and military officers to discuss the state of things with the West.  Leonid Brezhnev, still at the helm of the USSR, was invited to attend.  There, Andropov “told a surprised audience of his conviction about the imminent first-strike threat from Washington”[4].  The directive from that point was for the “KGB to co-operate with the Russian army in the biggest intelligence gathering-operation the Soviets had ever conducted in peacetime.”[4]  Codenamed RYAN (acronym: raketno yadernoye napadenie), the directive was for KGB agents abroad to search for any and all evidence pointing to an imminent NATO attack on the USSR.  Some indicators: high-level military personnel in NATO countries showing increased mobility;  convergence of top military brass and their families into civilian defense shelters; increased efforts to augment supply of blood through blood drives–all these factors would construe potential attack.  The KGB observed with eagle-eyes any strange movements that would tip off an imminent attack.

Simultaneously, a program of PSYOPS (psychological operations) was being executed by American forces throughout the globe.  American ships and planes would veer dangerously close to Soviet sea and air space, particularly into areas of military significance. Per Dr. William Schneider, at the time Undersecretary of State handling military and technological matters, “it really got to them..they didn’t know what it all meant. A squadron would fly straight at Soviet airspace…then would peel off and return home”.  [5]

Korean Air Flight 007, shot down by Soviet fighters over the Sakhalin Islands.

Adding to this toxic mix was the tragedy of Korean Airlines Flight 007, shot down in September, 1983.  A commercial passenger airline, Flight 007 blundered into Soviet airspace over the Kamchatka Peninsula.  The order to shoot it down while it was leaving Soviet airspace over the Sakhalin Islands went out; the plane was probably downed in international waters.  The worldwide reaction was one of shock and revulsion, for aboard Flight 007 were 269 innocents, including passengers and crew. The Soviets at first denied wrongdoing, but that only made things worse for them. The world-wide bad press further set them on edge.

The Near Apocalypse

Able Archer was the code name for a NATO exercise that encompassed the whole of the NATO defenses.  It was meant to simulate an attack from the east by the Soviets; it was the largest and most realistic drill attempted by NATO thus far.  In the interest of not exacerbating Soviet tensions and paranoia, NATO gave the Soviets ample warning that this was only a drill and not actual military action.  The Soviets got the memo, but didn’t believe it.  Yet again, NATO planes scrambled and flew near Soviet airspace, NATO submarines tested Soviet waters, and NATO personnel converged throughout Europe and the States into command centers that doubled as bunkers. As part of the drill, British PM Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl of Germany, and other NATO leaders took part by going to fortified command/control locations. It was all a drill, but to the Soviets, this was not a drill.  All of Andropov’s suspicions, strange as they seemed in May of ’81, appeared at that moment to be well-founded.  All elements of the Soviet armed services were put on highest alert.  Jets were scrambled, subs were armed and ready to battle, tanks and men east of the European dividing line that split the spheres of influence were out of barracks and were ready for deployment.  The war…was here.

The Americans leadership had a quite different take. Thinking that this was nothing more than sabre-rattling of a more strident kind, they failed to believe that this was anything other than posturing. But a few well-placed and influential people in the CIA got word to President Reagan that the Soviets truly believed Able Archer was no exercise but a genuine military attack, albeit in its early stages.  Reagan was reportedly stunned. He accurately intuited that his anti-Soviet verbal bellicosity no doubt contributed to a heightened paranoia on the part of the Soviet leadership, and course-corrected in the years after. Reagan’s pronouncement of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” didn’t help matters, accurate though that phrase was. Reagan dispatched high-level members of his administration to lessen tensions, to minimal effect, but at the very least, nuclear war was averted.  In the end, Reagan wrote this in his journal about this episode: “Three years has taught me something surprising about the Russians. Many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans.  This shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.”[6]

• [1] Sebestyen, Victor, Revolution 1989, pg. 79 (Vintage Press, 2012)
• [2] Sebestyen, Victor, Revolution 1989, pg. 22 (Vintage Press, 2012)
• [4] Sebestyen, Victor, Revolution 1989, pg. 81 (Vintage Press, 2012)
• [5] Zubok, Vladislav, A Failed Empire, pg. 278 (University of North Carolina Press, 2009)
• [6] Reagan, Ronald, An American Life: The Autobiography (Simon and Schuster, 1990)