The War Scare That Wasn't
Able Archer 83 and the Myths of the Second Cold War
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12746648 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Simon Mile (0000-0001-7076-2877, Duke University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 86-118 |
| Publication date | 2020-08-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Cold War Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1520-3972 • E-ISSN: 1531-3298 |
| Publisher | The MIT Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1162/jcws_a_00952 |
| OpenAlex | W3049615937 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 11 |
Did the Cold War of the 1980s nearly turn hot? Much has been made of the November 1983 Able Archer 83 command-post exercise, which is often described as having nearly precipitated a nuclear war when paranoid Warsaw Pact policymakers suspected that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was using the exercise to launch a preemptive nuclear strike. This article challenges that narrative, using new evidence from the archives of the former Warsaw Pact countries. It shows that the much-touted intelligence effort to assess Western intentions and capabilities, Project RYaN, which supposedly triggered fears of a surprise attack, was nowhere near operational at the time of Able Archer 83. It also presents an account of the Pact's sanguine observations of Able Archer 83. In doing so, it advances key debates in the historiography of the late Cold War pertaining to the stability and durability of the nuclear peace
Alliance · Cold war · Economic history · Historiography · Mythology · North Atlantic Treaty · Nuclear weapon · Pact · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Surprise · Classics · History · Intelligence, Security, War Strategy · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Nuclear Issues and Defense · Psychology · Social Psychology
Un ataque con misiles nucleares? El proyecto RYaN y los mitos de la Segunda Guerra Fría
AI in the information ecosystem and its impact on nuclear escalation
Able Archer
Deterring Russian Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons
C. Wright Mills, the nuclear weapons crisis cycle, and the continuing relevance of The Causes of World War Three
Multilateral Maritime Exercises, Grand Strategy, and Strategic Change
Scolding Intelligence
Fear, Loathing, and Cracks in Reagan’s Mirror Images
Explaining the End of the Cold War
How Able Was “Able Archer”
When truth is stranger than fiction
The Long Peace
The 1983 Nuclear Crisis – Lessons for Deterrence Theory and Practice
Soviet approaches to crisis management
Able Archer 83
Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve
| Citations per year | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |