Vermont Public Radio Comment for Thursday October 29th.
2015
INTRO: During the Reagan
administration, the U.S. and the Soviet Union came much closer to nuclear war
than any of us knew at the time. Commentator and veteran ABC News diplomatic
correspondent Barrie Dunsmore has the story.
TEXT: We know that during
the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the Middle East War of 1973, the United
States and the Soviet Union came dangerously close to a nuclear war. This past
week we learned that there was another close call in November 1983.
In
March of ‘83 President Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire.”
Six months later the Soviets shot down a Korean civilian airliner. That autumn
the U.S. started deploying intermediate range missiles in Europe. And in
November, NATO began an exercise to test its nuclear weapons command structure.
We now learn this exercise set off deep-seated fears in the Kremlin
that it was actually a cover for a surprise nuclear attack by the United
States. This is among the revelations of a top secret U.S. Intelligence review,
which was just declassified this month. In an extensive report and analysis in
the Washington Post, David Hoffman quotes that review as concluding, “In 1983,
we may have inadvertently placed our relations with the Soviet Union on a hair
trigger.”
Hoffman writes that there had been a long running debate about
whether the period known as the "war scare" was a moment of genuine danger.
This review concludes that for Soviet leaders the war scare was real. It also
faults previous American intelligence analyses for not taking this seriously.
The newly released document titled, “The Soviet War Scare” dated
February 15th, 1990, was prepared for the President’s Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board. Among its key findings - Soviet leaders were
alarmed by the November NATO exercise, involving forces stretching from Britain
to Turkey. While this was an annual event to practice nuclear readiness, that
year it contained new features including planes that taxied out of hangars
carrying realistic looking dummy warheads.
The Soviets responded with unprecedented reactions of their own.
Soviet military and KGB agents everywhere were put on highest alert, and
intelligence flights over North Western Europe increased
dramatically.
The review concludes that as Soviet doctrine called for pre-empting
any NATO attack by striking first, “this situation could have been extremely
dangerous.”
Also of significance, Post reporter Hoffman writes that the war
scare was a turning point for President Reagan. He cites Reagan’s diary during
the scare, and especially this quote from his memoirs. “I think many of us in
the administration took for granted that the Russians, like ourselves,
considered it unthinkable that the United States would launch a first strike
against them. But the more experience I had with the Soviet leaders…. the more I
began to realize that many Soviet officials feared us not only as adversaries,
but as potential aggressors.”
It was that kind of new thinking on Reagan’s part that helped to
end the Cold War.
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