Able Archer and the World's Most Dangerous Year

National Geographic described the decade of the 1980s as a decadent disastrous and innovative time in American history and it is somewhat difficult to explain to younger generations why we so enjoyed listening to Madonna on our sunny Walkmans perhaps informatica the decade was the year 1983 when Star Wars return of the dead I was the number one film and many of we original Star Wars fans wish that they had stopped there in 1983 no one could not say along with Bonnie Tyler's total eclipse of the heart and pretty much we still can't in January the Washington Redskins defeated the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl 17 mercifully putting an end to the notorious strike season and in October the Baltimore Orioles defeated the Philadelphia Phillies four games to one in the world series and then in November the world was nearly destroyed in nuclear Armageddon because while many of us did not realize it at the time 1983 has been described by some historians as the single most dangerous year in human history it's history that deserves to be remembered during the 1970s the Cold War saw a period of relative thaw called the era of they taught the tent was largely driven by the foreign policy of the Nixon administration and promoted by his Secretary of State Andrew Kissinger and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev the town was characterized by a number of summits agreements and treaties in an overall attempt to reduce the risk of confrontation between the two superpowers they talked certainly never eliminated the conflict and the two still engaged in proxy wars and espionage there's some disagreement of when the era of d'etat ended some say when Nixon left office in 1974 but others see the 1974 Vladivostok summit between President Ford and Brezhnev as a continuation of they talked and the framework of that meeting resulted in these salt or strategic arms limitation talks to agreement time between Brezhnev and President Jimmy Carter in June of 1979 in any case the period of d'etat was certainly over when six months after the salt 2 agreement the Soviet Union intervened to support the communist government in Afghanistan precipitating the soviet-afghan war in protest over what he described as an invasion President Jimmy Carter called for a boy of the 1980 Summer Olympics to be held in Moscow and the Tod became just a distant memory the same month the Solidarity union was formed at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk Poland a movement that would challenge communist rule in poet the Soviets in the West perceived these two events very differently the US and NATO allies in Europe saw the two movements as freedom movements and a rebellion against what they saw as serial violations of human rights in the Soviet Union the Soviets on the other hand is described by then head of the KGB Yuri Andropov two KGB members in March 1981 saw the defense of communist regimes in Poland in Afghanistan as the justified struggle of nations for their national and social liberation against attempts at exporting counter-revolution what in dropoff described as Soviet military support for a justified struggle against Western counter-revolution Carter called an invasion by a powerful atheistic government to subjugate an independent Islamic people arguing that one lesson learned by the world at great cost is that aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease the US and the West found of money to both the Musha Dean's opposition in Afghanistan and its Solidarity Union in poet' Cold War tensions grew more strained by changes in leadership in May 1979 Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister the United Kingdom she come to power in part on a platform of opposition to the Soviet Union arguing in the speech in January of that year that the Russians are bent on world dominance and they put guns before butter she concluded they are a failure in human and economic terms the following year Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States they taunt had deteriorated under Carter but Reagan was more forceful in his opposition to the Soviets in the famous speech in 1983 he referred to the Soviet Union as the evil empire and the focus of evil in the modern world both Thatcher and Reagan significantly increased defense spending something that Yuri Andropov called imperialists waging an arms race on an unprecedented scale in both East and West participated in that unprecedented arms race with weapons both conventional and nuclear in the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev died member 1982 was succeeded by Andropov Andropov was particularly distrustful the West part of this was likely derived from his rise to the Soviet intelligence services but historian Christopher Andrew notes the significance of anthropods experience during the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and drop-off was Soviet ambassador to hungry at the time you've said to be shocked at how quickly what seemed to be an all-powerful single-party state could collapse and drop-off was central to the Soviet decision to intervene militarily playing a role that earned him the nickname the butcher of Budapest the experience according to Andrew left Andropov with what was called a Hungarian complex that it convinced them that military force was necessary to ensure the survival of the socialist revolution this combination of leadership was dangerous as alligretto pesky a KGB officer who defected to the West noted was a potentially lethal combination of Reaganite rhetoric and Soviet paranoia one consequence was that Brezhnev and then Andropov became convinced that the United States was preparing for a nuclear war and was planning a first strike with the intent of decapitating Soviet leadership the perception was enhanced by the fact that both Brezhnev and and dropoff were old-fashioned Soviets and they believed in Soviet Dogma including the belief that Western capitalism was on the brink of failure and that Western nations would become more desperate and dangerous as it did beyond Hungarian complex in 1979 NATO decided to play us made Pershing two intermediate range nuclear missiles into West Germany while Nathan saw the Pershing is a response to the Soviet our as the 10 NATO designation ss-20 intermediate range missiles the Soviets are the Pershing to is a first strike weapon the Pershing two was deployed from a mobile launcher making it quick to deploy and difficult to target and was designed to destroy hard targets like Soviet missile sites the Soviets were afraid that the Pershing 2 could be deployed so quickly that the attack would not be detected until the Soviet returned strike capability was destroyed the deployment of the Pershing 2 was characteristic of the nature of the conflict and mistrust of the era both sides offered arms limitation solutions to deal with the tension of the missiles deployment NATO offered a so-called zero option they would not deploy the pershing too if the soviets would dismantle their SS 20s the soviets hoping to influence peace movements in the west countered by offering to camp missile launchers at 300 including the existing 250 british and french nuclear weapons the nato offer was not acceptable to moscow because it essentially required the soviet union to dismantle weapons that were already deployed and exchanged for nato weapons that didn't yet exist the soviet offer was not acceptable to nato because it left them no counter to the soviet SS 20s neither side budged but both blame the other this was characteristic in their rhetoric both sides claimed that were still committed to D talked but blamed the other for threatening peace the Soviets were also concerned with Reagan's support for the Strategic Defense Initiative or SDI in a speech to the nation in March 1983 Reagan said I call upon the scientific community who gave us nuclear weapons to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete SDI was intended to develop a ballistic missile defense weapon using advanced weapons concepts such as lasers of particle beams Reagan's how the proposal the means to free the world from the dangers of nuclear weapons but the Soviets ought is a method to protect the u.s. from retaliation allowing a first strike in 1981 and drop off and still head of the KGB announced two KGB agents a creation of operation Ryan which was a acronym for the Soviet words for nuclear missile strike operation Ryan was a directive for the KGB to covertly collect information regarding contingency plans for a u.s. nuclear first-strike this perception created a dangerous situation under the Reagan administration the US military was really testing Soviet defenses u.s. bomber aircraft would fight to the edge of Soviet airspace and turn around the last minute to test Soviet radar response times in April the Navy participated in an exercise called fleet X 83 the exercise included three US carrier groups off right operating off the coast of the Aleutian Islands in the largest fleet exercise in the Pacific since the Second World War in addition to the normal goals of practicing actions with integrated forces Fleet X 83 have the mission to intentionally provoke the Soviet Union into responding so the US forces could study their response and tactics the Navy saw fleet X 83 is a great success they did not realize that the Soviets were on a hair-trigger anticipating a u.s. first strike what the US was seeing is a normal cold war operation even deterrence the Soviets in operation Ryan were perceiving as a prelude to war in 1983 more tensions were thrown into the atmosphere of distrust on September first Korean Airlines flight 0:07 was flying from Anchorage Alaska to Seoul South Korea an error in the autopilot system caused the plane to fly over restricted Soviet airspace Soviet fighter interceptors apparently mistaking the plane for a US spy plane shot down the commercial aircraft with air-to-air missiles 269 passengers and crew were killed realizing the significance of their mistake the Soviet Union at first denied all knowledge of what happened to the plane the u.s. sensing a propaganda advantage released classified intelligence and communication intercepts to implicate the Soviets once they finally admitted the action the Soviets argued the plane was on a spying mission but the US was able to leverage the incident to shore up wavering allied support for the deployment of the pershing 2 on October 25th and internal conflicts and the tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada an island of just 135 square miles it became the next flashpoint the island government had been overthrown by Marxist revolutionaries in 1979 and the United States saw an invitation to intervene by the organization of Eastern Caribbean states as an opportunity to claim the island from marxist rule the resulting US invasion involved more than 7,000 US troops and the u.s. is able to defeat local and Cuban forces in just four days returning the island to democratic elections the following year public approval for the invasion in the US was high but the act was decried by the United Nations General Assembly u.s. analysts concluded that the island was of little consequence to the Soviet Union but that analysis was optimistic as later evidence suggests that the Soviets feared the Grenada invasion was practiced for a larger exercise of even more concern operation Ryan analysts noticed that there was a large spike in ciphered communications between London and Washington DC following the invasion of Grenada a sign that they took as evidence of an impending nuclear attack in fact Andrew garland of the University of Nevada Las Vegas notes that these communications were were complaints from Margaret Thatcher and queen elizabeth ii who were furious that the united states had invaded a commonwealth nation without either informing or involving the united kingdom with the soviets increasingly convinced at the u.s. in the UK were preparing a nuclear first-strike and with the u.s. unaware of the extent of the soviet concern nato was planning in november to simulate nato procedures during a nuclear war abel archer was the name for an annual nato exercise replicating the outbreak of hostilities in Europe was a command post exercise designed to test procedures more than actually moving troops Abel Archer 83 had been intended to be more robust than in recent years and keeping with Reagan's gold making exercises as real as possible as a means of preparation but National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane realized that the action could be provocative and had limited the scope of the exercise still the exercise simulated things like ciphered communication and command procedures as a conflict escalated from conventional to nuclear these are exactly the sorts of things that project Ryan was intended to detect the Soviets began to suspect that Abel Archer was a cover to facilitate an actual first strike assuming that the spike in ciphered communication after the invasion of Grenada represented planning for the attack the US and NATO remained oblivious despite several deviations from previous Abel Archer exercises they did not perceive that the exercise could be perceived as a threat by the Soviets unaware of project ryeom the NATO exercise was nearing exactly the scenario that the Soviets had assumed would lead to a pre-emptive nuclear strike convinced their only chance for survival was to strike before NATO could the Soviet Union readied its nuclear arsenal for attack while CIA intelligence notice activity at Soviet air bases the u.s. did not realize the extent of the Soviet response that turns out to have been lucky as US commanders decided not to increase us alert levels abel archer 83 ended on november 11th with nato apparently unaware that the exercise had brought the soviets to the brink of nuclear attack we still don't know exactly how serious the russians took the threat or how close they came to launch while intelligence assets at the time and documents that the brewery sends to show us that the Soviets certainly took the activity far more seriously than we once realized that general consensus is still that they didn't think an attack was eminent that their finger was not really on the trigger but some historians disagree including cold war historian and former CIA agent dr. Peter prior argument continued even for as little as another 24 hours that the West might have unwittingly stumbled into nuclear holocaust to this day we do not know how close the call was in the world's most dangerous year but there are other historians that argued that this was the event that changed everything Ronald Reagan was said to be very unnerved when he found out that the Soviets had taken the exercise seriously it seems to be the first time that he realized that the Soviets so mistrusted us that they thought that we would do the unthinkable and start a nuclear war he wrote in his memoirs I became more anxious than ever to get a top Soviet leader alone in a room and tried to convince him that we had no designs on the Soviet Union and Russians had nothing to fear from us Reagan started 1984 with a softer tone saying in an address on January 16th neither we nor the Soviet Union can wish away the differences between our two societies and our philosophies but we should always remember that we do have common interests and foremost among them is to avoid war and reduce the level of arms Andropov died the following February and Konstantin Chernenko spare the years general secretary he was ill throughout turned out to be only a brief caretaker in 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary in Gorbachev Reagan and Thatcher found a man with whom Thatcher said we can do business together in 1988 Reagan and Gorbachev signed the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty which among other things resulted in the decommissioning of both the Pershing two and the SS 20 by the end of the 1980s the cassette playing Walkman had largely been replaced by the CD playing disc man and mr. Reagan had Vince mr. Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets have forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on Facebook Instagram Twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring com and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 222,485

Rating: 4.9550529 out of 5

Keywords: history, the history guy, history guy, cold war, able archer, us history

Id: dZNoISRg494

Length: 16min 10sec (970 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 10 2020