Advocates of nuclear disarmament frequently argue that the United States and Russia face a real threat of accidental nuclear war due to miscalculation. In such a scenario, either Russia or the United States misjudges the actions of the other and starts a nuclear war.
Allied Command Europe’s Able Archer (1983) exercise is the example cited over and over again to suggest such a war is possible. The story goes that the Soviet Union mistakenly took the exercise as a screen for the United States to launch an attack on the Soviet Union. In response, Moscow made a number of moves to posture their forces for nuclear war.
The only problem with this story is that it misrepresents both Soviet and American actions prior to and during Able Archer. The myth falsely suggests that the world was on the precipice of Armageddon. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Ignoring the Boring Truth
Simon Miles’ academic article, “The War Scare that Wasn’t” and his popular article, “The Mythical War Scare of 1983,” adroitly show that neither the Soviets nor the Americans thought the other side was launching a nuclear attack. Declassified documents and firsthand accounts offer a very different picture of Able Archer from that offered in articles like the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ “Able Archer: How close of a call was it?”
In long discussions with senior colleagues who participated in Able Archer exercises, it was made clear that much of what passes for common knowledge is misguided. Those who argue that the exercise was a large-scale event with political and military participants exercising their respective roles against a largely free-form scenario are just wrong. These same authors also often suggest that Soviet leadership believed the exercise to be a screen for a nuclear attack. This, too, is not accurate.
For those who see the risk of accidental nuclear war as high, mischaracterizing Able Archer is a useful way to sow doubt about the stability, security, and resilience of the nuclear decision-making processes of the United States and Russia. This performance serves a larger nuclear disarmament agenda.
Other authors are taking a closer look at Able Archer, using newly declassified primary sources to challenge the disarmament community’s useful myth. But the story they tell is not helpful to the cause of disarmament, so it is ignored.
What Happened?
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists fails to note that authoritative accounts exist. Some of them are in the research cited by the Bulletin’s very article. As one NATO source document noted, “In 2006 the SHAPE [Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe] historian interviewed a number of senior participants in Exercise Able Archer 83. None of them recalled any ‘war scare’ or even any unusual Soviet reaction to the exercise. Air Chief Marshal Sir Peter Terry, the Deputy SACEUR who played the role of SACEUR during Able Archer 83, stated quite categorically that ‘no such scare arose at that time.’”
How then is it possible that the disarmament movement has made an industry out of hyping a war scare that never occurred?
The authoritative SHAPE documentation explains that Able Archer was a small-scale, scripted exchange of messages among several military headquarters in Allied Command Europe. Declassified NATO documents of the era demonstrate how banal these message exchanges are when part of procedural exercise — despite the messages’ obvious import in a real-world crisis.
Mark Kramer writes (translated from German), “The evidence that is now available does not suggest at any point that the highest leaders of the Soviet Union feared a nuclear attack by the United States at any time in the fall of 1983. Rather, the members of the CPSU’s Politburo do not even seem to have been aware that NATO was even holding its annual exercise ‘Able Archer’ in November 1983.”
He refers to the authoritative SHAPE documentation, writing, “The NATO military command components that participated in Able Archer 1983 — Supreme Allied Command Europe/ SACEUR, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe/SHAPE and their subordinate command-levels — left detailed records that are now preserved in the NATO Archives and the SHAPE Archive, respectively. They allow researchers, as long as the classification levels are removed, to trace exactly what went on in the exercises.”
Kramer adds, “The exercises were concentrated under the management of SACEUR and SHAPE exclusively on the chain of command, without the involvement of troop formations.” This is an important point. Able Archer was a command post exercise that saw no NATO forces employed. It was merely an exchange of messages. The Soviet intelligence apparatus watched NATO forces across Europe, particularly nuclear forces — for the specific purpose of looking for signs of attack preparations.
As Kramer makes clear in his analysis, Able Archer did not involve the participation of NATO political decision-making bodies such as the Nuclear Planning Group. Nor were the political leaders of the United States or European NATO members participants in the exercise. Secondary reports that claim one or more of the West’s political leaders participated are pure invention.
NATO’s decision-making bodies at the political level were simulated by military leadership at the commands conducting the exercise. The participation of the American and British decision-makers was simulated by cells in Washington and London sitting in the conference room of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, and in the British Ministry of Defense. The involvement of other national command posts was not intended at any time and did not take place.
Kramer further writes, “Later allegations that NATO suddenly and abruptly stopped Able Archer in order to defuse hostile reactions from the Soviet Union are consistently unfounded. The exercise was by no means carried out earlier than planned. NATO leaders at the time were no more worried about possible repercussions in the Soviet Union than they had been during previous Able Archer exercises.”
Intriguingly, the United States, SHAPE, and the NATO Archives declassified considerable information with respect to nuclear operations related to Able Archer and the “nuclear weapons release procedures,” which the SHAPE historian mentions were the core of Able Archer. Reading the historian’s report, which Kramer cites, alongside the declassified documents and this author’s experience, it is baffling how known falsehoods keep resurfacing.
Stop the Disinformation
Able Archer is an exercise of military headquarters procedures, with very dry, scripted exchanges among a few military personnel in the SHAPE Headquarters and its subordinate military headquarters in Allied Command Europe (now Allied Command Operations). It was never an exercise the Soviets, at any time, mistook for an impending nuclear strike.
The notion that the exercise was anything else is false. Society, politicians, and the military should devote time and thinking to issues of true import and stop repeating falsehoods that only offer to distract from real challenges. This is not to suggest that all is well. With the small nuclear arsenal of fighter-delivered B-61 gravity bombs that remains in Europe, there is considerable question as to the willingness of NATO to plan, practice, and execute nuclear strikes among NATO member-states. Rather, nuclear weapons are often viewed as political weapons more than weapons of war — the foundation of a deterrent.
Continuing to propagate an easily disproved myth because it serves a political purpose is the height of dishonesty and little more than disinformation. A safe, secure, and effective nuclear arsenal is the best way to deter Russia at this time of heightened danger, and it is far more deserving of our collective attention.
Dr. Adam Lowther is the Vice President of Research at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies. He spent more than two decades in the Navy or as an Air Force Civil servant. Dr. Lowther was the founding director of the US Air Force’s School for Advanced Nuclear Deterrence Studies (SANDS).
I wish to thank Dr. Joseph Wolfsheimer for his assistance with this article.
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