{"id":34179,"date":"2013-05-17T16:28:16","date_gmt":"2013-05-17T15:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/the-1983-nuclear-war-scare\/34179\/"},"modified":"2013-05-17T16:28:16","modified_gmt":"2013-05-17T15:28:16","slug":"the-1983-nuclear-war-scare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/the-1983-nuclear-war-scare\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1983 Nuclear War Scare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Image: President Reagan and General Secretary Andropov were named \u201cmen of the year\u201d in 1983 by the Time Magazine. The Central Intelligence Agency also included an image of this cover in its history of the 1983 War Scare. (Original cover \u00a9 Time, Inc.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Soviet \u201cHuffing and Puffing?\u201d \u201cCrying Wolf?\u201d \u201cRattling Pots and Pans?\u201d or \u201cA Real Worry That We Could Come into Conflict through Miscalculation?\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Largest On-Line Set of Primary Sources on \u201cThe Last Paroxysm\u201d of the Cold War Suggests \u2026 Both<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 426<\/em><\/p>\n

PART 1 OF 3 POSTINGS<\/em>
Posted \u2014 May 16, 2013<\/em><\/p>\n

Edited by Nate Jones<\/em>
Assisted by Lauren Harper<\/em>
With Document Contributions from Svetlana Savranskaya<\/em><\/p>\n

For more information contact:<\/em>
Nate Jones 202\/994-7000 or\u00a0foiadesk@gwu.edu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov warned US envoy Averell Harriman that the Reagan administration\u2019s provocations were moving the two superpowers toward \u201cthe dangerous \u2018red line\u2019\u201d of nuclear war through \u201cmiscalculation\u201d in June of 1983. Andropov delivered this warning six months before the 1983 \u201cWar Scare\u201d reached its crux during the NATO nuclear release exercise named Able Archer 83, according to Harriman\u2019s notes of the conversation posted for the first time today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The meeting provides important, first-hand evidence of Soviet leadership concerns about a possible US threat. But other documents included in this posting suggest that not all Soviet political and military leaders were fearful of a US preemptive first strike, but may rather have been \u201crattling their pots and pans\u201d in an attempt to gain geopolitical advantages, including stopping the deployment of Pershing II and Cruise nuclear missiles in Western Europe. \u201cThis would not be the first time that Soviet leaders have used international tensions to mobilize their populations,\u201d wrote the acting CIA director John McMahon in a declassified memo from early 1984.<\/p>\n

President Reagan zeroed in on the essence of this debate in March of 1984 when he asked his ambassador to the Soviet Union, Arthur Hartman, \u201cDo you think Soviet leaders really fear us, or is all the huffing and puffing just part of their propaganda?\u201d The evidence presented here, and in two forthcoming electronic briefing books in this series, suggests that the answer to the president\u2019s question was \u201cboth.\u201d<\/p>\n

This first of three \u201cWar Scare\u201d postings also includes KGB reports corroborating the creation of Operation RYaN, the largest peace-time intelligence gathering operation in history, to \u201cprevent the possible sudden outbreak of war by the enemy;\u201d a newly declassified CIA\u00a0Studies in Intelligence<\/em>\u00a0article concluding that Soviet fears of a preemptive U.S. nuclear strike, \u201cwhile exaggerated, were scarcely insane;\u201d and declassified backchannel discussions between Reagan advisor Jack Matlock and Soviet sources who warned of \u201cgrowing paranoia among Soviet officials,\u201d whom the source described as \u201cliterally obsessed by fear of war.\u201d<\/p>\n

The documents in this series provide new information and add nuance to the ongoing debate over the significance \u2013 some even argue, the existence \u2013 of a genuine war scare in the Soviet Union. The documents come from Freedom of Information Act releases by the CIA and U.S. Defense Department, research findings from American archives, as well as formerly classified Soviet Politburo and KGB files, interviews with ex-Soviet generals, and records from other former communist states.<\/p>\n

The next electronic briefing book in the series will examine the exercises Autumn Forge 83, Reforger 83, and Able Archer 83, using NATO, U.S. Air Force, and other documents. The third posting will chronicle the U.S. intelligence community\u2019s evolving understanding of and debate over the 1983 War Scare.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>\u201cDo you think Soviet leaders really fear us, or is all the huffing and puffing just part of their propaganda?\u201d President Reagan asked his Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Arthur Hartman in early 1984, according to declassified talking points from the Reagan Presidential Library. President Reagan had pinpointed the question central to the 1983 War Scare. That question was key to the real-time intelligence reporting, the retroactive intelligence estimates and analyses of the danger, and it remains the focus of today\u2019s continuing debate over the danger and lessons of the so-called \u201cAble Archer\u201d War Scare.<\/p>\n

Some, such as Robert Gates, who was the CIA\u2019s deputy director for intelligence during the War Scare, have concluded, \u201cAfter going through the experience at the time, then through the postmortems, and now through the documents, I don\u2019t think the Soviets were crying wolf. They may not have believed a NATO attack was imminent in November 1983, but they did seem to believe that the situation was very dangerous.\u201d<\/a>[1]<\/sup>\u00a0Others, such as the CIA\u2019s national intelligence officer for the Soviet Union, Fritz Ermarth, wrote in the CIA\u2019s first analysis of the War Scare, and still believes today, that because the CIA had \u201cmany [Soviet] military cook books\u201d it could \u201cjudge confidently the difference between when they might be brewing up for a real military confrontation or \u2026 just rattling their pots and pans.\u201d<\/a>[2]<\/sup><\/p>\n

\u201cHuffing and puffing?\u201d \u201cCrying wolf?\u201d \u201cJust rattling their pots and pans?\u201d While real-time analysts, retroactive re-inspectors, and the historical community may be at odds as to how dangerous the War Scare was, all agree that the dearth of available evidence has made conclusions harder to deduce. Some historians have even characterized the study of the War Scare as \u201can echo chamber of inadequate research and misguided analysis\u201d and \u201ccircle reference dependency,\u201d with an overreliance upon \u201cthe same scanty evidence.\u201d<\/a>[3]<\/sup><\/p>\n

To mark the 30th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary of the War Scare, the National Security Archive is posting, over three installments, the most complete online collection of declassified U.S. documents, material no longer accessible from the Russian archives, and contemporary interviews, which suggest that the answer to President Reagan\u2019s question \u2013 were the Soviets \u201chuffing and puffing\u201d or genuinely afraid? \u2013 was both, not either or.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s posting includes:<\/p>\n