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Nate Jones

Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise That Almost Triggered Nuclear War Hardcover – November 1, 2016

by Nate Jones (Editor)

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In November 1983, Soviet nuclear forces went on high alert. After months nervously watching increasingly assertive NATO military posturing, Soviet intelligence agencies in Western Europe received flash telegrams reporting alarming activity on U.S. bases. In response, the Soviets began planning for a countdown to a nuclear first strike by NATO on Eastern Europe. And then Able Archer 83, a vast NATO war game exercise that modeled a Soviet attack on NATO allies, ended.

What the West didn't know at the time was that the Soviets thought Operation Able Archer 83 was real and were actively preparing for a surprise missile attack from NATO. This close scrape with Armageddon was largely unknown until last October when the U.S. government released a ninety-four-page presidential analysis of Able Archer that the National Security Archive had spent over a decade trying to declassify. Able Archer 83 is based upon more than a thousand pages of declassified documents that archive staffer Nate Jones has pried loose from several U.S. government agencies and British archives, as well as from formerly classified Soviet Politburo and KGB files, vividly recreating the atmosphere that nearly unleashed nuclear war.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

The New Press
Publication date

November 1, 2016
Dimensions

6.3 x 1.2 x 9.3 inches
ISBN-10

1620972611
ISBN-13

978-1620972618
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Able Archer 83:
"Twenty-one years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, a NATO exercise, Able Archer 83, came terrifyingly close to precipitating an accidental nuclear war. Nate Jones's brilliantly researched and gripping history of government miscalculations and misjudgments on both sides of the iron curtain during this war game, poses the 21st century's most serious existential question: How many nuclear bullets can humanity dodge? Read it and reckon! I don't think you will like the answer."
―Martin J. Sherwin, University Professor of History at George Mason University and author of A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies

"Able Archer 83 is an invaluable resource on one of the most dangerous moments of the Cold War. The book contains an unmatched collection of previously secret documents about the War Scare of 1983 and the Able Archer exercise at the center of it. If you want to learn from history, this is the place to start."
―David E. Hoffman, author of The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy

"Able Archer 83 brings us back to a moment when we all came close to becoming cinders or radioactive corpses. It's an important contribution to our understanding of how the Cold War played out, and how erroneous assumptions routinely become institutionalized policy, which then becomes almost irresistible."
―Glenn L. Carle, a former CIA officer and author of The Interrogator

From the Back Cover

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Publisher ‏ : ‎ The New Press; Illustrated edition (November 1, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1620972611
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1620972618
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.45 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.3 x 1.2 x 9.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #631,382 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #166 in Arms Control (Books)
- #499 in Nuclear Weapons & Warfare History (Books)
- #874 in Conventional Weapons & Warfare History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
59 ratings

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Dr. Moses Altsech

Book? What book?

Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2017

Verified Purchase

This is a 59 page pamphlet (some of it is context, some of it commentary, and some actually about Able Archer), which is accompanied by 240 pages of [often redacted or barely legible] photocopied documents. In all fairness there is no author (this is EDITED BY Nate Jones), and the description says that the story is TOLD THROUGH declassified documents. You should take both very, very literally. Yet this looks like a book, and it's referred to as a book in the back cover reviews, when in reality it's no more a book than the most recent issue of Cosmo. You can learn just as much about Able Archer by googling it. You have $27 to spare? Order a pizza and a six pack of beer to celebrate not having bought this.

40 people found this helpful

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T Tyler

Read the primary source documents on-line, don't buy this book.

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2017

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The author & the National Security Archives are to be commended for their work which led to the variety of Able Archer documents being declassified, released, and published on the National Security Archives web page.

However, after buying & reading this book, I'm at a loss as to why in the world they bothered with it. Much of the book is simply poor reproductions of the material they obtained & posted on their web page, and then Nate Jones basically repeating "The Soviets were really, really worried about Able Archer in particular, & President Reagan in-general. The US government didn't know or believe that the Soviets actually thought that the USA could or would ever initiate a first-strike, so they had no idea that a strategic nuclear war exercise like Able Archer would greatly alarm them" over many pages.

Usually when it comes to strategic command & control, nuclear operations, etc. I'm excited to read the book & then keep it for future reference in my library, but with this book, I'm trying to decide if it's even worth the postage to mail it off to a friend, since I have no desire to make room for it in my book case.

27 people found this helpful

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$18 for a magazine article

Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2017

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I'm giving this One Star only for misleading the buyer into thinking this is an actual book. The book is 302 pages long but In reality, the information is in the first 59 pages. The remainder of this book, 243 pages, is acknowledgments , photos, and documents I assume were previously redacted. This is a glorified magazine article that is very interesting, IF you're willing to spend over $ 18 to read it.

24 people found this helpful

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F. W. Strong III

A useful but not comprehensive review of a very dangerous Cold-War Incident that is unreadible on newer Kindles.

Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2017

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Nate Jones has done a real service in compiling the background declassified US and UK Intelligence Analytical Products regarding the Soviet reaction to ABLE ARCHER 83. I had just returned to the US DoD Intel Community as a Specified Command Intelligence Watch Chief as AA-83 ran, and am genuinely interested in what had occurred and the US Indications and Warning Community had missed. Two factors detract from its utility. First, there is very little information provided from the Soviet viewpoint. This information is available at the Hoover Library at Stanford and would have added considerable credibility to the work. The second, and more serious limitation is a matter of presentation. I had this book downloaded to my newer Kindle and most of the essential declassified texts were simply unreadable. They were much too small to read even with a magnifying glass. When I downloaded the book to my old Kindle DX, I could decipher them. Hopefully the printed version does not suffer from this limitation.

5 people found this helpful

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Kyle Bogosian

I suppose it would have been better to know before purchasing what the content of the ...

Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2016

Verified Purchase

The important thing to note about this book is that most of it is scans of original documents and reports from the 1980s. I haven't gone through them in any detail, so this review is really just about the part that I did read, although the documents look interesting. Another reviewer said that apparently it's all available online, though I appreciate having them collected in book form. Apparently some of it is newly declassified material that was not available in the past. About 60 pages of the book is actual prose dedicated to the history and analysis of the war crisis. I suppose it would have been better to know before purchasing what the content of the book was. And to be honest, the story of Able Archer 83 is not particularly complex or suspenseful, it was just a period of high tensions and uncertainty, not a complicated episode like the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Jones provides evidence that indicates that the days of the exercise of 1983 had the highest probability of reaching nuclear war of any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. He shows that the Soviets were very uncertain and fearful of NATO actions, but doesn't really say much to indicate how an actual exchange was likely to have been triggered, when the Soviets were unsure about the situation and Able Archer didn't plan for any major aggressive operations that could have been perceived as an attack. It's just up to the reader to imagine what could have happened if a stray bomber entered Soviet airspace or if forces went to escalating higher alerts.

Jones briefly states that one of the conclusions of the scenario is that game theoretic models don't apply to nuclear deterrence. This was actually the kind of research that I read this book for, and I think he oversteps there. Deterrence theory would adequately predict that introducing faster IRBMs with short times of flight would make the situation more risky with a greater advantage for and probability of first-strike strategies, as well as the Soviet fears and responses they displayed. The individual actions of political and military leaders affected the subtleties of the crisis, but it's not clear that they changed much of the structure of the overall situation. An American general kept his forces on low alert to avoid escalation, which was fortuitous, but again it's not clear that the Soviets would have actually initiated the tremendous step towards war either way. And since the Americans poo-pooed Soviet fears of an American first strike as huffing and puffing, it's plausible that they would not have perceived further Soviet escalations as a real threat. So again it's up to the reader to imagine.

The book includes some good analysis and examination of the analyses of the crisis which have been conducted already. Overall, I think it's good, I liked it. It still makes a good case for the risks of 1983 as well as the persistent global danger of having a diplomatically incompetent president.

4 people found this helpful

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Total Psycobable

Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2017

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I was THERE, this guy can’t put together what was really going on for the life him!

5 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Incredible scholarship. Jones has done a tremendous service in ...

Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2017

Verified Purchase

Incredible scholarship. Jones has done a tremendous service in assembling this collection--and providing commentary to put it in its proper context. Terrifying to think that absent his efforts this chapter of history would be lost.

One person found this helpful

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Terrond Green

I'm looking forward to a 300 page book but all I get is 59 pages and the rest useless almost unreadable photo copies of redacted

Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2017

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It's really lousy . I'm looking forward to a 300 page book but all I get is 59 pages and the rest useless almost unreadable photo copies of redacted memos. What a let down

10 people found this helpful

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Ken

Interesting read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 17, 2018

Verified Purchase

A good read if your are interested in the history of the cold war and especially the Regan era and how they percieved the soviet threat.

ROBERT WILSON

THE MOST DANGEROUS POINT IN THE COLD WAR WAS NOT CUBA

Reviewed in Canada on March 11, 2017

Verified Purchase

Excellent argument for terming this, by far, the most dangerous "episode" of the Cold War, not the Cuban Missile Crisis as so often claimed..
Excellent presentation of facts and events in pages 1-66.
And in pages 67-302, an incredible collection of secret official papers (many in infuriatingly small print and smudged typewriter script) related to the actual events.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was not dangerous at the top levels: both Kruschev and Kennedy had actually been in a real war(WW 2, where Kruschev had vastly more experience than Kennedy). This gave them the overriding drive to stop war breaking out, especially Kruschev.

There was danger in Cuba, but it was at a lower level, and not known at the time:
-unknown to the US Navy, one Russian sub it was hounding had a nuclear torpedo which it was authorized to use under the existing
conditions; the cool reserve of the Russian sub captain saved the day;
-unknown to the Chiefs of Staff, who were demanding an invasion of Cuba at Guantanamo Bay because the Cubans had no weapons
there, the Russians actually had short range nuclear missiles just over the hill, ready to fire; the cool determination of President
Kennedy in facing down the Chiefs (his 'finest hour') saved the day there.
Michael Dobbs (ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT, 2008) has written a marvelous book on the Cuban crisis.

President Reagan tried to so overawe the USSR leaders that they would give up their (in his opinion) dream of destroying the United States. In a gruesome irony, the Russian leadership held an exactly mirror-image view of the United States: it lusted to destroy the USSR.
It was a case of two powerhouses looking past each other.

By the 1980s, the Russians realized the superiority of the US military, and the inferiority of their own: in a battle they would lose.
So the only option they had was to go down fighting.

Russian fear was raised when President Reagan announced the European deployment of Gryphon cruise missiles and Pershing ll intermediate range missiles: these could reach Moscow in mere minutes, and kill the Russian leaders, leaving Russia defenceless.

Unfortunately, the various military exercises in Autumn 1983 played into the Russian sense of inferiority and paranoia.
- Autumn Forge 83 was the blanket name for over a dozen exercises;
-Reforger 83, the largest exercise, simulated conventional warfare, with the US actually moving troops from the US to Europe;
-Able Archer was the final exercise, a command post exercise where top-level leaders would initiate the changeover
from conventional warfare to chemical/nuclear warfare. This was so convincing, the Russians moved forces to border positions
ready to invade Europe.

These exercises were intentionally made realistic to IMPRESS Russian leaders that they dare not go to war.
And here was the greatest danger point in the Cold War: they almost CONVINCED the Russian leaders that they had to go to war first.

Some experts pooh-pooh this interpretation.
In rebuttal,I would cite the "Damascus Road Conversion" of President Reagan after he read a secret report of the Russian reaction to Able Archer 83:
-before Able Archer 83, President Reagan talked forcefully of war;
-after Able Archer 83, President Reagan talked only of peace.

And he acted for peace: perhaps his greatest performance.

Jean-Marc Brûlez

Unnecessary buy

Reviewed in France on June 1, 2020

Verified Purchase

60 pages of text and 250 pages of annexes mostly uncensored (but some are still heavily "holed") documents of approximative readability due to size and fonts.
This is a "I should not have bought" book. I should have been more cautious with the "edited by" mention on the cover.

One person found this helpful

Giggegubb

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 16, 2017

Verified Purchase

Superinteresting. Extra for the autentic documents included. Let the facts speak for themselves!

One person found this helpful

Alpha

Good book about event that almost changed the world permanently

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 12, 2017

Verified Purchase

Good book about event that almost changed the world permanently. Terrifying to think what could happen and how close nuclear war actually was in that time.

One person found this helpful

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