At a time when the west’s relations with Russia are spiralling downwards to the lowest point since the cold war, a reminder that we have been here before – and survived – may provide some comfort. The Cuban missile crisis of November 1962 is usually cited as the time when apocalypse was nearest. In a blaze of publicity, US president John F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, the Kremlin’s leader, issued nuclear ultimatums while an anxious world watched for several nervous days. In the end a secret deal and mutual concessions resolved the crisis. Twenty-one years later an equally threatening moment occurred, but it was one that hardly anyone in the west was aware of at the time. Even now, it is barely known.
Nuclear war almost broke out, not because of a public confrontation and macho challenges between superpowers, nor because of false radar or satellite signals (there were at least three occasions when the Soviet Union almost “retaliated” for technical mistakes suggesting it was under attack). The origins of the crisis of 1983 were more serious, a misunderstanding of how each side’s leaders perceived the other’s intentions – in other words a failure of political intelligence. This is why the crisis has similarities to the west-versus-Russia tension that surrounds us today.
The year began badly with an escalation of moralistic rhetoric. Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union “an evil empire”. Soviet leaders feared he was preparing Americans for a pre-emptive strike against the USSR, especially as Nato was installing medium-range Pershing II and cruise missiles in western Europe, which would halve the time needed for US weapons to reach Russia’s major cities. Reagan was also pressing for the development of a new generation of weapons that could shoot down incoming missiles, thereby neutralising the Soviet Union’s retaliatory potential. This Strategic Defence Initiative, which became known as Star Wars, could eventually allow the US to launch a nuclear attack with impunity.
As Soviet paranoia increased, a South Korean airliner, KAL007, that had strayed illegally for more than two hours into Soviet air space was shot down in September, killing all 269 people on board. The Russians mistook it for an American spy plane that had been in the area a short time earlier. Taylor Downing is a historian and film-maker who has interviewed the Soviet pilot who downed the plane and several other US and Soviet military and political figures from the time. Downing explains that the head of US Air Force Intelligence, which was monitoring the Soviet commanders’ and pilots’ messages, quickly realised the Soviets had made a terrible blunder. But among western politicians “the sense of moral outrage built up like water behind a dam,” he writes, “waiting to burst forth when the floodgates were opened”.
The accident became a propaganda godsend. George Shultz, the secretary of state, said the it showed typical Soviet callousness and neglect of human life. William Casey, head of the CIA, told Reagan that his department’s analysts had concluded that the Soviet fighter pilot never positively identified the plane as civilian, but the president ignored this, preferring to denounce Moscow for committing “a crime against humanity”. Not for the first or last time, outrage and preconceptions about the inherent barbarity of the adversary swept everything else aside. As with the Skripal poisoning case, outrage and preconceptions about the inherent barbarity of the adversary swept everything else aside, drowning out whatever might later emerge from the specialists who were sifting the evidence without being allowed to speak publicly.
In November 1983, the annual Nato exercise (codenamed Able Archer) took place in West Germany. For the first time long-range US B52 planes were used and Nato changed its codes during the exercise, alarming Soviet agents. Both sides had contingency plans to attack the other under cover of military exercises and in the fevered post-KAL007 atmosphere the Kremlin became convinced Able Archer was it. The Soviets mobilised their medium range SS20 missiles in Europe in readiness for counter-attack. Unaware of these Soviet moves, Nato’s war games proceeded as planned. US political leaders gave commanders the necessary but still notional authority to launch 350 nuclear weapons against Soviet targets. The KGB sent telegrams to their agents round the world that the situation was critical.
Fortunately, no actual counterattack orders were given and when Able Archer ended a few hours later the Kremlin relaxed. It turned out that its spies had played a useful role: the mole at Nato HQ reported seeing no sign of top officials retreating to bunkers. As Robert Gates, later defence secretary under George W Bush and Barack Obama, said: “We may have been at the brink of nuclear war and not even known it.”
Downing tells this grim story with pace and flair. Marc Ambinder covers similar ground with a more jumbled narrative, but his book has interesting details. In his wallet the US president carries the “biscuit”, a wedge of white laminated plastic, a little thicker than a credit card. It contains several alphanumeric combinations, designed to prove the person ordering nuclear war is actually the president. “It’s right next to my driver’s licence”, Reagan used to say, a bit sheepishly.
For all the president’s outrage over Soviet activity, at least until Mikhail Gorbachev emerged, Ambinder reports Reagan’s instinctive unwillingness to take part in the regular war games and face the prospect of one day having to press the button for real. His staff wondered if he ever would.
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