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The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983
The incredible story of the 1983 war game that triggered a tense, brittle period of nuclear brinkmanship between the United States and the former Soviet Union.
What happened in 1983 to make the Soviet Union so afraid of a potential nuclear strike from the United States that they sent mobile ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) into the field, placing them on a three-minute alert?
Marc Ambinder explains the anxious period between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1982 to 1984, with the “Able Archer ’83” war game as the fulcrum of the tension. With astonishing and clarifying new details, he recounts the scary series of the close encounters that tested the limits of ordinary humans and powerful leaders alike. Ambinder explains how political leadership ultimately triumphed over misunderstandings, helping the two countries maintain a fragile peace.
Ambinder provides a comprehensive and chilling account of the nuclear command and control process, from intelligence warnings to the composition of the nuclear codes themselves. And he affords glimpses into the secret world of a preemptive electronic attack that scared the Soviet Union into action. Ambinder’s account reads like a thriller, recounting the spy-versus-spy games that kept both countries—and the world—in check.
From geopolitics in Moscow and Washington, to sweat-caked soldiers fighting in the trenches of the Cold War, to high-stakes war games across NATO and the Warsaw Pact, The Brink serves as the definitive intelligence, nuclear, and national security history of one of the most precarious times in recent memory.
What happened in 1983 to make the Soviet Union so afraid of a potential nuclear strike from the United States that they sent mobile ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) into the field, placing them on a three-minute alert?
Marc Ambinder explains the anxious period between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1982 to 1984, with the “Able Archer ’83” war game as the fulcrum of the tension. With astonishing and clarifying new details, he recounts the scary series of the close encounters that tested the limits of ordinary humans and powerful leaders alike. Ambinder explains how political leadership ultimately triumphed over misunderstandings, helping the two countries maintain a fragile peace.
Ambinder provides a comprehensive and chilling account of the nuclear command and control process, from intelligence warnings to the composition of the nuclear codes themselves. And he affords glimpses into the secret world of a preemptive electronic attack that scared the Soviet Union into action. Ambinder’s account reads like a thriller, recounting the spy-versus-spy games that kept both countries—and the world—in check.
From geopolitics in Moscow and Washington, to sweat-caked soldiers fighting in the trenches of the Cold War, to high-stakes war games across NATO and the Warsaw Pact, The Brink serves as the definitive intelligence, nuclear, and national security history of one of the most precarious times in recent memory.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published July 10, 2018
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September 21, 2024
“As [Soviet pilot Gennadi Osipovich] got closer, he swung around behind the plane; at a distance of 250 meters he saw the portholes of a Boeing 747. At night, though, he could not see its silhouette. Osipovich had standing orders to fire on a plane that ignored warnings during the day; he had to get special permission to fire on one at night. He knew that the US regularly used passenger airplane shells for reconnaissance patrols in Europe, and he could not fathom how a real Boeing 747, with all of its sophisticated communications and navigation equipment, could wander so far off its route…Osipovich fired his guns off the aircraft’s stern. Only then did the plane begin to turn away, toward neutral waters. Osipovich was ordered to try to force the plane to land. He radioed that the plane was trying to escape. He was given an order to fire on it. He did. He saw a flash under the keel of the plane and then an explosion near its tail. The porthole lights went out.
‘The target is destroyed,’ he said over the radio. He began to return to his base.”
- Marc Ambinder, The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983
On September 1, 1983, Korean Airlines Flight 007 enroute to Seoul, blundered into Soviet airspace. Mistaking the plane for a RC-135 Cobra Ball spy plane, the Soviets blew it out of the sky with an air-to-air missile, killing all 269 people on board. The passengers and crew had several minutes to absorb the fact that they were going to die; it is unlikely, however, that they ever knew why.
The downing of KAL 007 is one of several moments of high international tension covered in Marc Ambinder’s The Brink. The centerpiece of the book is Able Archer 83, a NATO war-games exercise that many Soviets mistook for the opening gambit of World War III. Mostly unknown at the time, some historians argue – perhaps with a bit of hyperbole – that it is the closest the world came to a nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
***
Though Able Archer is The Brink’s selling point, it is not really its central concern. Instead, Ambinder places it into a larger context extending from 1982 to 1984, in which nuclear brinkmanship tested the diplomatic skills of all sides. This is smart for a couple reasons.
First, the Able Archer exercises are simply not substantive enough to support anything more than an article, much less a book. Second, it is extremely debatable how seriously the Soviets actually took Able Archer as a threat. While some local units reacted nervously to the NATO exercises, Ambinder never really argues that an exchange of nuclear weapons was a likely outcome of this anxiety. Indeed, catastrophe was far likelier to occur due to the malfunctioning of warning sensors falsely showing incoming missile attacks, with such glitches endured by both the United States and Soviet Union.
Rather than focusing on a single discrete cause, Ambinder takes you through the steady buildup of crisis points. Ronald Reagan, for instance, changed from a policy of détente to defeat, sharpening his rhetoric (e.g., “the evil empire”), increasing military budgets, placing Pershing II missiles in Europe, and proposing an anti-ballistic missile program. The Soviets also played a role with their Operation RYaN, a paranoia-fueled project based on the assumption that the U.S. was planning an atomic first strike.
***
Ambinder tells this story in novelistic, character-based fashion. The top-level decision-makers are covered, as well as their aids. But he also utilizes the viewpoints of people closer to the ground: an American spying for the Soviets; a Soviet spying for the British; an American captain in charge of a nuclear missile base in Germany. While this provides for a propulsive narrative momentum (The Brink put me in mind of a true-life Tom Clancy techno-thriller), it also makes it a bit difficult to see the larger picture. There is a lot of jumping around and some of the material included here feels like padding, since it adds little or nothing to the overarching story. While I’m generally okay with padding done right, the added-on bits were not always intrinsically interesting.
***
The Brink was not always the smoothest read for me. At times I found Ambinder’s style to be a bit less than elegant, with choppy sentences and mid-paragraph direction changes. I also feel compelled to add another note on the sorry state of modern-day publishing. Despite charging a hardcover price of $27.00, it appears that The Brink was never proofed. There are numerous grammatical errors, dropped words, extra words, and even an aside that began with a parentheses and ended with a quotation mark. Look, I get that mistakes are made. I make them myself. But this is an allegedly-professional publication that is asking you to hand over money in order to read it. It shouldn’t be edited with all the care given to an amateur blog post.
***
Ambinder concludes his tale with a rundown of the present state of affairs with regards to nuclear posturing. While he provides a chilling look at how a war on the Korean peninsula might unfold, he does not really attempt to drawn any lessons from 1982-84 that might be applied today.
The lesson I drew is that decade after decade of nuclear preparations has been a tragic waste of precious human resources. I’m not so naïve as to think that we’ll ever get to a nuclear-free world, or that unilateral disarmament is the answer. So, this is not a criticism as much as it is a lament. But when you read a book like The Brink, the pointlessness of nuclear warfare becomes readily apparent.
For instance, Ambinder discusses Project Pegasus, the Reagan Administration’s continuity of government plan. The planners quickly learned that despite all our advanced weapons, despite all the hardened sites and advanced communication measures, that despite all the early warning and detection efforts, a Soviet first strike would decapitate the government, kill the president, and lay waste to command systems. The fail-safe they came up with involved mobile command convoys and the random selection of a new head of state, among other items. Thus, if a nuclear war had commenced – despite pouring the wealth of generations into such eventualities – we would have had a situation in which the Secretary of Education might have become president, and a plane would have flown over the glowing wasteland of the United States, attempting to flash messages to surviving assets to launch everything they had.
It is staggering to think how much treasure has been spent preparing to blow up the world, all in the belief that the threat to blow up the world is the only thing to keep it from happening.
‘The target is destroyed,’ he said over the radio. He began to return to his base.”
- Marc Ambinder, The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983
On September 1, 1983, Korean Airlines Flight 007 enroute to Seoul, blundered into Soviet airspace. Mistaking the plane for a RC-135 Cobra Ball spy plane, the Soviets blew it out of the sky with an air-to-air missile, killing all 269 people on board. The passengers and crew had several minutes to absorb the fact that they were going to die; it is unlikely, however, that they ever knew why.
The downing of KAL 007 is one of several moments of high international tension covered in Marc Ambinder’s The Brink. The centerpiece of the book is Able Archer 83, a NATO war-games exercise that many Soviets mistook for the opening gambit of World War III. Mostly unknown at the time, some historians argue – perhaps with a bit of hyperbole – that it is the closest the world came to a nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
***
Though Able Archer is The Brink’s selling point, it is not really its central concern. Instead, Ambinder places it into a larger context extending from 1982 to 1984, in which nuclear brinkmanship tested the diplomatic skills of all sides. This is smart for a couple reasons.
First, the Able Archer exercises are simply not substantive enough to support anything more than an article, much less a book. Second, it is extremely debatable how seriously the Soviets actually took Able Archer as a threat. While some local units reacted nervously to the NATO exercises, Ambinder never really argues that an exchange of nuclear weapons was a likely outcome of this anxiety. Indeed, catastrophe was far likelier to occur due to the malfunctioning of warning sensors falsely showing incoming missile attacks, with such glitches endured by both the United States and Soviet Union.
Rather than focusing on a single discrete cause, Ambinder takes you through the steady buildup of crisis points. Ronald Reagan, for instance, changed from a policy of détente to defeat, sharpening his rhetoric (e.g., “the evil empire”), increasing military budgets, placing Pershing II missiles in Europe, and proposing an anti-ballistic missile program. The Soviets also played a role with their Operation RYaN, a paranoia-fueled project based on the assumption that the U.S. was planning an atomic first strike.
***
Ambinder tells this story in novelistic, character-based fashion. The top-level decision-makers are covered, as well as their aids. But he also utilizes the viewpoints of people closer to the ground: an American spying for the Soviets; a Soviet spying for the British; an American captain in charge of a nuclear missile base in Germany. While this provides for a propulsive narrative momentum (The Brink put me in mind of a true-life Tom Clancy techno-thriller), it also makes it a bit difficult to see the larger picture. There is a lot of jumping around and some of the material included here feels like padding, since it adds little or nothing to the overarching story. While I’m generally okay with padding done right, the added-on bits were not always intrinsically interesting.
***
The Brink was not always the smoothest read for me. At times I found Ambinder’s style to be a bit less than elegant, with choppy sentences and mid-paragraph direction changes. I also feel compelled to add another note on the sorry state of modern-day publishing. Despite charging a hardcover price of $27.00, it appears that The Brink was never proofed. There are numerous grammatical errors, dropped words, extra words, and even an aside that began with a parentheses and ended with a quotation mark. Look, I get that mistakes are made. I make them myself. But this is an allegedly-professional publication that is asking you to hand over money in order to read it. It shouldn’t be edited with all the care given to an amateur blog post.
***
Ambinder concludes his tale with a rundown of the present state of affairs with regards to nuclear posturing. While he provides a chilling look at how a war on the Korean peninsula might unfold, he does not really attempt to drawn any lessons from 1982-84 that might be applied today.
The lesson I drew is that decade after decade of nuclear preparations has been a tragic waste of precious human resources. I’m not so naïve as to think that we’ll ever get to a nuclear-free world, or that unilateral disarmament is the answer. So, this is not a criticism as much as it is a lament. But when you read a book like The Brink, the pointlessness of nuclear warfare becomes readily apparent.
For instance, Ambinder discusses Project Pegasus, the Reagan Administration’s continuity of government plan. The planners quickly learned that despite all our advanced weapons, despite all the hardened sites and advanced communication measures, that despite all the early warning and detection efforts, a Soviet first strike would decapitate the government, kill the president, and lay waste to command systems. The fail-safe they came up with involved mobile command convoys and the random selection of a new head of state, among other items. Thus, if a nuclear war had commenced – despite pouring the wealth of generations into such eventualities – we would have had a situation in which the Secretary of Education might have become president, and a plane would have flown over the glowing wasteland of the United States, attempting to flash messages to surviving assets to launch everything they had.
It is staggering to think how much treasure has been spent preparing to blow up the world, all in the belief that the threat to blow up the world is the only thing to keep it from happening.
May 17, 2019
I like to think of myself as a persistent reader. I don't give up on a book all that easily. But I stopped reading this book on page 7. Yes, page 7! And not because I was not interested in the topic. To the contrary, I want to learn more about Able Archer, the war games that came close to tipping the world into nuclear war, and I will seek other books on this subject. The reason I couldn't bring myself to read on was that these first 7 pages were appallingly badly written. My contention is that the author, who seems to be a broadcast rather than a print journalist, violated some simple rules of writing. Let me name them, and with the examples of how the author ignored them.
1. Start your story with an attention-grabbing sentence. Page 1 : "Before the order to release the nukes came in, the sun had set over the dry pines of the patch of land called the Fulda Gap in West Germany, the autumn cold was hard, and Captain Lee Trolan, commander of the 501st Army Artillery Detachment, a nuclear weapons custodial brigade, tried to keep warm and focus on the intricate set of procedures he was shortly to execute." There is an attempt to create tension here : nukes are going to be released! An intricate set of procedures must be executed! We are on the edge of our seats! But in the middle of that we have to hear that the sun has set and the autumn is cold in a place in Germany. Total letdown in the most important sentence of the book!
2. Use the correct term. Page 4 : "The system of nuclear command and control was barely translucent even to Trolan, who was a cleared, trained, certified end user". "Translucent" means : "it lets light through", not "it's clear", which is the way in which it seems to have been used here.
3. Don't try to sound clever. Page 7 "This understanding may well have been a contingent fact, the product of historical accidents, but instantiated a sacred aura to the product of forty years of secret knowledge, game theory, and technological determinism."Huh? What in the name of Dwight D. Eisenhower does this mean??
4. Don't write nonsense. Page 7 "Everything nuclear was subordinated to the SIOP; it had the right of the crown to every piece of nuclear anything the United States had ever built". Except, presumably, civilian power plants, which are not listed in the list of military equipment and personnel that follow this sentence. Also, "the right of the crown" is not the metaphor I would use for the USA, but that may be a matter of personal preference.
5. Don't exaggerate. Page 7, with reference to the Soviet Union :"..and had lost far more in war than any other nation on earth." Well, perhaps the Soviet Union had lost more lives in war than any other nation on earth from a purely numerical standpoint, but at least it had survived as a nation, with its own language, history and culture. The Aztecs and other peoples from Central and South America had been largely wiped out during their encounters with Europe - entire languages, cultures and cities vanished, which I think counts as having lost far more. I don't know enough about African history to be sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if colonialism had done similar damage.
6. Don't interrupt the flow with irrelevant or unclear stuff. Page 5 : we've just read how Captain Lee Trolan is puzzled by a message he's just decoded, in his "patch of land called the Fulda Gap in West Germany", when all of a sudden we get a few paragraphs about a colonel Yesin in Moscow, who's worried about getting "an order". That's all we hear about him. Then a new chapter begins. The idea is probably to introduce a person we will hear more about later, but those introductions work better if something is said about that person that makes him memorable, something that tells us :"Remember this name ! He will play a role later on."
7. For historical non-fiction, indicate time and place. We hear a lot of detail of where Captain Trolan is located, but we don't know on what day he is decoding messages and getting ready to release nuclear warheads. This is rather an important aspect of military situations, where things change from day to day, from hour to hour.
Am I too literal in my reading? Maybe. But I found these first pages full of pretentious word choices and over-engineered sentence construction, and totally devoid of any ability to capture and keep the reader's attention. Too bad, because the topic is interesting and I had been looking forward to learning more about the events of 1983.
Anyone who knows of a legible book about this topic is cordially invited to use the "comments" tool to send me the title!
1. Start your story with an attention-grabbing sentence. Page 1 : "Before the order to release the nukes came in, the sun had set over the dry pines of the patch of land called the Fulda Gap in West Germany, the autumn cold was hard, and Captain Lee Trolan, commander of the 501st Army Artillery Detachment, a nuclear weapons custodial brigade, tried to keep warm and focus on the intricate set of procedures he was shortly to execute." There is an attempt to create tension here : nukes are going to be released! An intricate set of procedures must be executed! We are on the edge of our seats! But in the middle of that we have to hear that the sun has set and the autumn is cold in a place in Germany. Total letdown in the most important sentence of the book!
2. Use the correct term. Page 4 : "The system of nuclear command and control was barely translucent even to Trolan, who was a cleared, trained, certified end user". "Translucent" means : "it lets light through", not "it's clear", which is the way in which it seems to have been used here.
3. Don't try to sound clever. Page 7 "This understanding may well have been a contingent fact, the product of historical accidents, but instantiated a sacred aura to the product of forty years of secret knowledge, game theory, and technological determinism."Huh? What in the name of Dwight D. Eisenhower does this mean??
4. Don't write nonsense. Page 7 "Everything nuclear was subordinated to the SIOP; it had the right of the crown to every piece of nuclear anything the United States had ever built". Except, presumably, civilian power plants, which are not listed in the list of military equipment and personnel that follow this sentence. Also, "the right of the crown" is not the metaphor I would use for the USA, but that may be a matter of personal preference.
5. Don't exaggerate. Page 7, with reference to the Soviet Union :"..and had lost far more in war than any other nation on earth." Well, perhaps the Soviet Union had lost more lives in war than any other nation on earth from a purely numerical standpoint, but at least it had survived as a nation, with its own language, history and culture. The Aztecs and other peoples from Central and South America had been largely wiped out during their encounters with Europe - entire languages, cultures and cities vanished, which I think counts as having lost far more. I don't know enough about African history to be sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if colonialism had done similar damage.
6. Don't interrupt the flow with irrelevant or unclear stuff. Page 5 : we've just read how Captain Lee Trolan is puzzled by a message he's just decoded, in his "patch of land called the Fulda Gap in West Germany", when all of a sudden we get a few paragraphs about a colonel Yesin in Moscow, who's worried about getting "an order". That's all we hear about him. Then a new chapter begins. The idea is probably to introduce a person we will hear more about later, but those introductions work better if something is said about that person that makes him memorable, something that tells us :"Remember this name ! He will play a role later on."
7. For historical non-fiction, indicate time and place. We hear a lot of detail of where Captain Trolan is located, but we don't know on what day he is decoding messages and getting ready to release nuclear warheads. This is rather an important aspect of military situations, where things change from day to day, from hour to hour.
Am I too literal in my reading? Maybe. But I found these first pages full of pretentious word choices and over-engineered sentence construction, and totally devoid of any ability to capture and keep the reader's attention. Too bad, because the topic is interesting and I had been looking forward to learning more about the events of 1983.
Anyone who knows of a legible book about this topic is cordially invited to use the "comments" tool to send me the title!
August 10, 2018
Not for anyone who suffers from anxiety.
August 8, 2018
It's about time that a book on this subject appeared...but I wish I could sing its praises a bit more than a three star rating. It's coverage of the military side of events is excellent, if overwhelmed by acronyms (which the opening glossary doesn't quite help in mitigating). However, the socio-political-cultural side of the story is only occasionally touched upon, and deserves far more exposure, in order to place the events of 1982 to 1984 in proper context. Solid, detailed but frustrating history.
October 6, 2018
A very interesting read into history and events that are relatively recent. Enjoyed the information provided from all the sources, which include spies, administration officials and military officials. Amazing how close WWIII could have occurred over posturing and misunderstandings. Definitely recommend this book.
March 9, 2025
Biased against Russia. Not surprising given what he is
October 24, 2020
The book covers the time around Able Archer 83, a NATO military exercise that the Soviet Union thought might be a pretext for launching a nuclear first strike. It seems like the world was fairly close to nuclear war because of the very tense environment before the exercise, and the fact that the exercise was more realistic than previous exercises.
The book was decent, but longer than I was interested in reading (maybe I should have just read the wikipedia page? :-) ) and a little hard to follow at times because there were a lot of people involved.
My takeaway from all of this is that you really need to have these sorts of exercises to practice what to do if a war does start, just like you need to practice anything that has to be done well. But the fact that one nuclear weapon launched can cause untold damage (and lead to more being launched) makes the risk of simulating a war starting inherently dangerous. This is not dissimilar from the lessons from Command and Control - keeping nuclear weapons at the ready all the time is pretty dangerous!
Some interesting parts:
- In the late 1970s, the Soviet Union was spending 60-70% of its industry on defense!
- NATO's messages to launch nuclear weapons were protected by what I'm guessing is a one-time pad, which is theoretically unbreakable. However, the Soviet Union could figure out the length of the messages, and they could also tell when most "normal" messages weren't being sent in order to clear the way for possible nuclear messages. Side-channel attacks go way back :-)
- Sergeant First Class Clyde Conrad was a US spy for Hungary who passed them lots of Army plans. He got to be good friends with the NATO people who were in charge of nuclear command and control secrets, and eventually they trusted him enough to hand him old crypto keys that were supposed to be destroyed because they didn't want to go out in the cold and do it themselves!
- One program that the East Germans got word of from a US Air Force spy (Jeffrey Carney) was CANOPY WING, which was designed to disrupt the Soviet command and control system at the start of a war. As you can imagine, this made the Soviets very nervous, because what reason is there to do this unless you're planning a first strike?
- Another reasons the Soviets thought Able Archer might be the start of a real war is that they had tapped in to phone lines to listen to messages to a NATO base in Germany. The messages were encrypted, but the Soviets could still figure out the length of the messages. But the format of the messages had just changed at the start of the exercise, and this is the sort of thing that makes one thing that something big is happening.
- Part of the exercise also involved nuclear submarines like the Kamehameha getting orders to prepare to launch their nuclear missiles. The captain and executive officer knew it was an exercise, but the weapons officers did not. And they ended up being closer to launching their missiles than the captain expected; he still thought it was an exercise but wasn't sure. This sounds terrifying!
- A separate intelligence operation happened right around the start of Able Archer - a military plane was going to fly over West Berlin sending the electronic signatures of a B-52 bomber. The idea was that the Soviet Air Defense would detect this and send emergency signals to their superiors, and the US could observe what those signals looked like. But, you know, this sounds pretty risky! In fact, Jeffrey Carney (the spy for East Germany) got word of what was happening the day of and immediately went to notify the East Germans to tell them this wasn't a real attack!
- There was a general rule - when one side was doing an exercise, the other side paid close attention to gather intelligence but didn't increase their military alert status (or have their own exercise) because it was too dangerous. But during the US's GLOBAL SHIELD exercise in April 1984 the Soviet Union launched a bunch of ships and planes. This was shortly after the Soviet leader Yuri Andropov had died, so this was another opportunity for something to go terribly wrong.
- In 1984 the British began to realize (thanks to Oleg Gordievsky, a Soviet spy) that the Soviets really did think that NATO might launch a nuclear war, and that NATO might do it under the pretext of an exercise. This helped the UK and US understand how dangerous the situations had been.
The book was decent, but longer than I was interested in reading (maybe I should have just read the wikipedia page? :-) ) and a little hard to follow at times because there were a lot of people involved.
My takeaway from all of this is that you really need to have these sorts of exercises to practice what to do if a war does start, just like you need to practice anything that has to be done well. But the fact that one nuclear weapon launched can cause untold damage (and lead to more being launched) makes the risk of simulating a war starting inherently dangerous. This is not dissimilar from the lessons from Command and Control - keeping nuclear weapons at the ready all the time is pretty dangerous!
Some interesting parts:
- In the late 1970s, the Soviet Union was spending 60-70% of its industry on defense!
- NATO's messages to launch nuclear weapons were protected by what I'm guessing is a one-time pad, which is theoretically unbreakable. However, the Soviet Union could figure out the length of the messages, and they could also tell when most "normal" messages weren't being sent in order to clear the way for possible nuclear messages. Side-channel attacks go way back :-)
- Sergeant First Class Clyde Conrad was a US spy for Hungary who passed them lots of Army plans. He got to be good friends with the NATO people who were in charge of nuclear command and control secrets, and eventually they trusted him enough to hand him old crypto keys that were supposed to be destroyed because they didn't want to go out in the cold and do it themselves!
- One program that the East Germans got word of from a US Air Force spy (Jeffrey Carney) was CANOPY WING, which was designed to disrupt the Soviet command and control system at the start of a war. As you can imagine, this made the Soviets very nervous, because what reason is there to do this unless you're planning a first strike?
- Another reasons the Soviets thought Able Archer might be the start of a real war is that they had tapped in to phone lines to listen to messages to a NATO base in Germany. The messages were encrypted, but the Soviets could still figure out the length of the messages. But the format of the messages had just changed at the start of the exercise, and this is the sort of thing that makes one thing that something big is happening.
- Part of the exercise also involved nuclear submarines like the Kamehameha getting orders to prepare to launch their nuclear missiles. The captain and executive officer knew it was an exercise, but the weapons officers did not. And they ended up being closer to launching their missiles than the captain expected; he still thought it was an exercise but wasn't sure. This sounds terrifying!
- A separate intelligence operation happened right around the start of Able Archer - a military plane was going to fly over West Berlin sending the electronic signatures of a B-52 bomber. The idea was that the Soviet Air Defense would detect this and send emergency signals to their superiors, and the US could observe what those signals looked like. But, you know, this sounds pretty risky! In fact, Jeffrey Carney (the spy for East Germany) got word of what was happening the day of and immediately went to notify the East Germans to tell them this wasn't a real attack!
- There was a general rule - when one side was doing an exercise, the other side paid close attention to gather intelligence but didn't increase their military alert status (or have their own exercise) because it was too dangerous. But during the US's GLOBAL SHIELD exercise in April 1984 the Soviet Union launched a bunch of ships and planes. This was shortly after the Soviet leader Yuri Andropov had died, so this was another opportunity for something to go terribly wrong.
- In 1984 the British began to realize (thanks to Oleg Gordievsky, a Soviet spy) that the Soviets really did think that NATO might launch a nuclear war, and that NATO might do it under the pretext of an exercise. This helped the UK and US understand how dangerous the situations had been.
September 29, 2019
A gripping account of how close the Soviets and the Americans came to nuclear war in the early 1980s. The book shows how impossible it was for mutually assured destruction to be an effective block to holocaust. Some interesting insights into how unlikely it would have been to get a decision from the President once it was clear that nuclear weapons were hurtling to the US - plenty of logistical and technical challenges. Ambinder concludes with a quick assessment of the current situation with Putin possessing a huge nuclear arsenal and a US president not as cool headed as Reagan. Not very reassuring.
A great book for those who followed the Reagan presidency. I would rate it higher if it were better written or edited. He seemed to jump around and I could discern a literary purpose.
A great book for those who followed the Reagan presidency. I would rate it higher if it were better written or edited. He seemed to jump around and I could discern a literary purpose.
October 3, 2020
Ok, so overall, this book is actually a 4 star book. The data in it is simply amazing. The story telling is well done also, for the most part. There are just two things that made me drop the overall score.
1. Typos. They drive me nuts. In a book that comes from a big 5 company, there's no excuse for a typo. Ok, maybe one. But I lost track of the number of typos in this book. A few actually inhibited the reader from understanding entire sentences.
2. The book's title was about the Brink of war in 1983. The back third of the book goes all through 1984 without relating it back to the events of 1983.
Once again, if you're studying the 1983 Able Archer exercise that almost ended the world, get this book. But be prepared to be disappointed with the way things are presented.
1. Typos. They drive me nuts. In a book that comes from a big 5 company, there's no excuse for a typo. Ok, maybe one. But I lost track of the number of typos in this book. A few actually inhibited the reader from understanding entire sentences.
2. The book's title was about the Brink of war in 1983. The back third of the book goes all through 1984 without relating it back to the events of 1983.
Once again, if you're studying the 1983 Able Archer exercise that almost ended the world, get this book. But be prepared to be disappointed with the way things are presented.
September 17, 2018
While keeping all of the government agency acronyms straight was a little bit of a challenge, this read like an old Tom Clancy Spy novel. In retrospect, it is amazing how much he got right.
I was a college student during the mid eighties, and remember some of these events from the news, particularly Reagan's "evil empire" reference. Mr. Ambinder does an excellent job of explaining what was going on behind the scenes, the tension between various members of Reagan's staff, and the Soviet mindset during this terrifying episode of the Cold War.
I was a college student during the mid eighties, and remember some of these events from the news, particularly Reagan's "evil empire" reference. Mr. Ambinder does an excellent job of explaining what was going on behind the scenes, the tension between various members of Reagan's staff, and the Soviet mindset during this terrifying episode of the Cold War.
April 8, 2019
This one just didn't work for me. It just seemed too disjointed, leaping from one character to another, from a missile unit in West Germany, to spies in London, to Reagan, and on and on.
Ultimately, it became too easy to put this book down and too hard to keep going in it.
Ultimately, it became too easy to put this book down and too hard to keep going in it.
July 11, 2020
Sadly this could have been a much better book if it had told a story. Instead it was fact after fact after fact. The book reads like an analysis research paper and it is just as dry. You get no sense of what it was like during this time, you just get stated facts. Making this a very dry read.
November 2, 2020
This book will not become a major motion picture. Unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis there was no climax, no central moment. Instead we get a steady build up of rhetoric, mistrust, misunderstanding, along with the political infrastructure to go toward nuclear war, giving leaders limited time and possibly very limited information. When Ronald Reagan visited NORAD, after he was elected President but before he took the oath, he asked a simple question. After a briefing on what would happen with a major nuclear attack and then the retaliation, Reagan asked what would happen if only one missile was launched. The air force told him there was nothing they could do to stop the missile. Reagan then envisioned thousands, possibly millions, of people dead due to a possible accident. This would be his inspiration for Strategic Defense Initiative and wanting to reduce missiles with talks with the Soviets.
The Brink refers to the early years of the Reagan administration. What we now know due to Soviet archives is that the Soviets believed Reagan would launch a surprise attack on them. Reagan was surprised they thought this of him. What seemed to be forgotten by both sides was that both were reacting to their entrance into World War II through surprise attack. The paranoia thinking of never again had both militaries on edge. In this book Marc Ambinder goes through the defense mechanisms showing both sides bragged about having the newest and the best and not mentioning with these new technologies there where glitches in the systems. These glitches, combined with the rhetoric, increased the tensions, and made especially the Soviet Union with their finger on the button, waiting to press it so they will get their retaliatory strike. Things come close to danger when NATO had some military exercises, including practicing the procedures for a nuclear launch, in 1983 and the Soviets went on alert. It was months later when US analysts started to look over Soviet movements and actions that the Americans realized how afraid and alert they were.
Reagan pushed his administration toward talks. This was not popular within the administration especially amongst the Reagan conservative loyalists. Some were stating how the US could win a nuclear war. Reagan never thought there would be a winner, and although he believed he was living through the days of armageddon, he wanted to avoid the prophecies coming true. The book covers mainly the era from 1980-1983.
Marc Ambinder brings the subject alive, a subject that at times could be very dry and boring. The war gaming the military and political establishment do helps them practice and see how their systems would work. When Reagan experienced them he noted that it was difficult to end a war if both sides lost their leadership in the exchange. It is probably in the idea of deterrence, this nuclear standoff, where Reagan earns the right to be called great. He did not except the status quo, and then took his thinking one step further down the process to decide he wants to talk. Reagan saw no good out of living in the fear and hated the best defense was offensive. Ambinder's usage of the Soviet archives helps. We do see Reagan's joke that he couldn't summit with the Soviet leadership because they kept dying has a large kernel of truth in it. Once Gorbachev, younger and healthier than his predecessors, took over the Soviets political leadership could take a firmer consistent hold of nuclear policy and discuss reduction.
Ambinder's book is not about the meetings of Gorby and Reagan, but about the systems that detect nuclear launch. He ends the book with President Trump dealing with North Korea, and noting many of the same issues about being sure of a launch, that a war is beginning, still exist. This book was an eye opener about the whole process of the nuclear football with the President down to the soldiers who will turn the key to launch nuclear missiles at whatever target the missile was assigned. Ambinder does a great job of showing how the system would have worked and probably a lot of it today.
The Brink refers to the early years of the Reagan administration. What we now know due to Soviet archives is that the Soviets believed Reagan would launch a surprise attack on them. Reagan was surprised they thought this of him. What seemed to be forgotten by both sides was that both were reacting to their entrance into World War II through surprise attack. The paranoia thinking of never again had both militaries on edge. In this book Marc Ambinder goes through the defense mechanisms showing both sides bragged about having the newest and the best and not mentioning with these new technologies there where glitches in the systems. These glitches, combined with the rhetoric, increased the tensions, and made especially the Soviet Union with their finger on the button, waiting to press it so they will get their retaliatory strike. Things come close to danger when NATO had some military exercises, including practicing the procedures for a nuclear launch, in 1983 and the Soviets went on alert. It was months later when US analysts started to look over Soviet movements and actions that the Americans realized how afraid and alert they were.
Reagan pushed his administration toward talks. This was not popular within the administration especially amongst the Reagan conservative loyalists. Some were stating how the US could win a nuclear war. Reagan never thought there would be a winner, and although he believed he was living through the days of armageddon, he wanted to avoid the prophecies coming true. The book covers mainly the era from 1980-1983.
Marc Ambinder brings the subject alive, a subject that at times could be very dry and boring. The war gaming the military and political establishment do helps them practice and see how their systems would work. When Reagan experienced them he noted that it was difficult to end a war if both sides lost their leadership in the exchange. It is probably in the idea of deterrence, this nuclear standoff, where Reagan earns the right to be called great. He did not except the status quo, and then took his thinking one step further down the process to decide he wants to talk. Reagan saw no good out of living in the fear and hated the best defense was offensive. Ambinder's usage of the Soviet archives helps. We do see Reagan's joke that he couldn't summit with the Soviet leadership because they kept dying has a large kernel of truth in it. Once Gorbachev, younger and healthier than his predecessors, took over the Soviets political leadership could take a firmer consistent hold of nuclear policy and discuss reduction.
Ambinder's book is not about the meetings of Gorby and Reagan, but about the systems that detect nuclear launch. He ends the book with President Trump dealing with North Korea, and noting many of the same issues about being sure of a launch, that a war is beginning, still exist. This book was an eye opener about the whole process of the nuclear football with the President down to the soldiers who will turn the key to launch nuclear missiles at whatever target the missile was assigned. Ambinder does a great job of showing how the system would have worked and probably a lot of it today.
May 28, 2025
This book is completely unnecessary.
The titular "war scare of 1983" barely amounts to a third of the book. And virtually all the other material has been told much more skillfully elsewhere.
- That spy in the London KGB rezidentura? Read MacIntyre's "The Spy and the Traitor"
- Kaplan's "The Wizards of Armageddon" and " The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War" are far more informative on how various administrations have approached the problem of nuclear weapons and strategy with the latter book having plenty on the Reagan years.
- Random nuclear incidents? Schlosser's "Command & Control" has plenty in addition to its central narrative.
- Etc.
This book suffers from innumerable typos and poor editing generally. But the overwhelming sense is that after the book was pitched, the author realized there was only about 50 pages of decent material but the publishers bought 250. And so the main topic was padded out with side-yarns and various other topics, only tangentially related to Able Archer.
The titular "war scare of 1983" barely amounts to a third of the book. And virtually all the other material has been told much more skillfully elsewhere.
- That spy in the London KGB rezidentura? Read MacIntyre's "The Spy and the Traitor"
- Kaplan's "The Wizards of Armageddon" and " The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War" are far more informative on how various administrations have approached the problem of nuclear weapons and strategy with the latter book having plenty on the Reagan years.
- Random nuclear incidents? Schlosser's "Command & Control" has plenty in addition to its central narrative.
- Etc.
This book suffers from innumerable typos and poor editing generally. But the overwhelming sense is that after the book was pitched, the author realized there was only about 50 pages of decent material but the publishers bought 250. And so the main topic was padded out with side-yarns and various other topics, only tangentially related to Able Archer.
May 24, 2018
Lots of good NC3 history in this read, it was very informative. I enjoyed the perspective on Reagan, and his desire to understand the Soviets, including his relationship with Gorbachev. I also liked the continuity of government information and lots of good end notes for further research.
The book also talked about the B-52's role in Able Archer '83, and how we mistakenly signaled aggressive intent to the Soviets.
I definitely recommend this for anyone interested in Cold War history, nuclear deterrence, and nuclear command and control.
The book also talked about the B-52's role in Able Archer '83, and how we mistakenly signaled aggressive intent to the Soviets.
I definitely recommend this for anyone interested in Cold War history, nuclear deterrence, and nuclear command and control.
October 16, 2018
Very interesting book overall. I kind of got bogged down in all the acronyms and government lingo but I'm not sure he could've thoroughly explored the subject without talking a lot about that. I think the subtitle is a bit over sold. It makes it sound like it was almost the same thing as the Cuban missile crisis with an intentional face down, but it was more like the two powers understood each other so little that a war exercise almost took them to a brink that neither wanted to go to.
November 25, 2020
Good portrayal of the various NATO and US military exercises in 1983 (the lead-up and the fallout). Excellent discussion of Reagan's very bellicose language that greatly antagonized the Soviet Union. We came frightfully close to a major war in 1983, and after reading this book, you'll fully understand why. Explains the gross misunderstandings and communications between the US and the USSR. Make me appreciate how one person, Gen Leonard Peroots, saved us from WWIII. It was that close.
December 15, 2018
This was a great book that delved into the security of nuclear weapons and related systems as well as what the thinking of Nato and USSR leaders was during this period of time. If you have any interest in the cold war, this is a must-read book.
August 11, 2018
Very interesting
September 19, 2018
Fascinating account of this era of the cold war. Exhaustive yet entertaining throughout.
December 22, 2018
Interesting book with an almost "thriller-like" style. Good pacing. There were quite a number of errors though - at least one in almost every chapter. The sheer number is inexcusable.
January 10, 2020
Ugh...I really wanted to like this book. Just couldn’t get there. So much meat to tell in this story, but it was incredibly disjointed. Fascinating history told in a very poor way.
July 20, 2024
Fascinating topic, good book cover, but unfortunately the writing is tortured - convoluted, impenetrable, and grandiose. Unfortunate.
October 24, 2025
Just an awful book, it felt like there were several chapters missing. the nuclear scare was never actually even discussed, dont bother
September 10, 2019
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did. I originally gave it 3 stars, but decided 2 stars was more appropriate. It has interesting information and revelations about the state of relations between the USA and USSR in the early 80s, but they’re nearly lost in a poorly written story rife with typos (missing words, incorrect words used, the maddening use of “ordinance” instead of “ordnance” when writing about weapons) and factual errors (calling Bradley IFVs “tanks”, calling Pershing IIs “cruise missiles”, etc.). (In fairness, I read a first edition, first printing, so so,e of the typos and errors could have been corrected in later printings.) The topic could be the subject of a thrilling, readable history. This book isn’t it.
October 27, 2021
A very insightful and informative story about superpower geopolitics in the 80s…and how close we came to conflict on several occasions. Great read on the mindset of Ronald Reagan and his perspective on the Soviet Union.
June 13, 2019
While the book sheds light on an interesting episode in recent history, it is riddled with grammatical and factual errors. The book was in dire need of editing.
April 2, 2018
This book is an excellent telling of the end of the cold war and one of the near nuclear conflicts that occurred. Having grown up in the 1980s, much of this book filled in the truth of the time that I was not aware. The fear of the Soviet Union I understood well. The Soviet fear of the United States surprised me. I had never thought of my country as a threat to another.
The author does a great job of outlining the problems of Mutually Assured Destruction diplomacy. He explains the efforts that President Reagan had to goto to engage the Soviets directly. The complete lack of trust that the State Department had for the Soviets and the President surprised me. I never realized the difficulty of implementing a new approach by a president. The bureaucracy does run the town.
The author does a great job of outlining the problems of Mutually Assured Destruction diplomacy. He explains the efforts that President Reagan had to goto to engage the Soviets directly. The complete lack of trust that the State Department had for the Soviets and the President surprised me. I never realized the difficulty of implementing a new approach by a president. The bureaucracy does run the town.
September 10, 2018
This book took my back to the 80s and the height of the Cold War. It was well written and I would recommend it to anyone who loves history, and also anyone who grew up in the 80s and remember the beginning of th end of the Soviet Union.
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