EDITOR'S NOTE: Marc Ambinder’s “The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear Scare of 1983” was published this month by Simon & Schuster. As part of our interview series, RealClear Authors, the author recently participated in this Q&A about it.
RealClearBooks: I guess it’s not giving away the ending of your book — because readers will know that the world was not destroyed — but just how close did we come to all-out nuclear war on November 8, 1983?
Marc Ambinder: The scariest part of it is how close we came without knowing it. Think of this scenario: November 8, 1983. NATO is practicing the transfer of nuclear warheads from the U.S. custodial sites across Europe to the armies of NATO countries. Moscow is on lockdown. The KGB and GRU are at wartime footing. Soviets have secretly dispatched KGB officers into missile silos with nuclear launch keys. In East Germany, fighter jets are stealthily placed on combat alert. General-level officers and their mobile ballistic missile regiments are moved, secretly, to their wartime locations. And everyone is watching and waiting. And the U.S. and NATO, for the most part, are oblivious to this — our intelligence agencies pick up signs and signals that something was wrong, but it took months for them to figure out what had happened.
RCB: Your novel explains how NATO’s Able Archer 83 war games set the scene for the crisis. What made this particular nuclear exercise unique — and uniquely dangerous?
Ambinder: It happened after a year of brinksmanship and false alarms, including the shooting down of a Korean passenger jet by the Soviets and very aggressive psychological warfare by the U.S. Navy. Added to this: the fears of a dying Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, and the incomphrensibility of Ronald Reagan to the Soviets. The final ingredient: the U.S. HAD changed its nuclear doctrine and the Soviets were afraid of a pre-emptive strike.
RCB: You write that Soviet mid-range ballistic missiles were on a three-minute combat alert that night and armed KGB officers were sent down in silos with Russian military officers, presumably to force them to “push the button” if the order came down. That’s a pretty terrifying image.
Ambinder: And it happened, as I said, without the U.S. or NATO knowing. That means that the fear was real and not contrived.
RCB: Any chance that a young intelligence officer named Vladimir Putin was one of those KGB guys?
Ambinder: I wish! But no — Putin had a desk job in those days monitoring dissidents.
RCB: How much did Yuri Andropov and Ronald Reagan know about what was happening in real time
Ambinder: They had a lot of information and had trouble fitting into the context. Intelligence streams were constant, but separating the real stuff from the chaff was — and is — hard. The Soviets knew a bit more because they were on a higher alert status. Reagan was overseas at the time of the exercise and didn’t learn until much later that the British had picked up ominous signs that Able Archer might have gone too far.
RCB: So this was the Cuban Missile Crisis without Nikita Khrushchev or John F. Kennedy even being aware how close we were to Armageddon?
Ambinder: Basically, yes.
RCB: How did you first learn of this story — and what made you decide to write a book about it?
Ambinder: I’d been fascinated by the nuclear command and control system for years, and I saw a documentary that raised the question of how close we came but didn’t answer it. I really wanted to answer it.
RCB:Why is this historical account not better known?
Ambinder: Since it wasn’t just one thing or one event but a series of exercises, policy moves, intelligence actions and military procedures, and it happened inside of a number of different countries, pulling the whole story together required a journalistic/novelistic approach. I had to interview actual participants and collate declassified documents and find ways of tying together strands of history that might otherwise have remained isolated. Many of the programs I describe in the book remain classified, as does much of the raw intelligence.
RCB: Do you think this story reveals something new to readers about the role of the commander-in-chief in times of crisis?
Ambinder: Yes. I’ll list them:
- They need to have faith in their intelligence services.
- They also need to keep the big picture in mind and not act rashly.
- They must be curious about their adversary and not presume to know how he thinks or why he acts the way he does.
- They must seek advice widely but make firm decisions and follow through on them — and they, alone, must take responsibility for the enormous burden imposed by the fact of the existence of nuclear weapons.
RCB: What did you discover that surprised you the most while writing this book?
Ambinder: It is an author’s delight to be surprised, and I was delighted by so much. Mainly, I think I was surprised by how the British and the U.S. did not see eye to eye on Russia; I was surprised by the sheer aggressiveness of some top secret U.S. electronic warfare programs; and I was surprised by how, well, unjaded President Reagan seemed. He was truly an earnest guy.
RCB: How did Reagan’s political ideology affect his actions in dealing with the nuclear war scare?
Ambinder: He helped to instigate it. He bought into the attitude that a strong military would deter Russia, that evil had to be described as such, and that the communist system was doomed to fail. His ideology, though, did not eschew diplomacy, and it was based on the powers of his personality, which, thankfully, lent themselves to compromise.
RCB: How were you able to uncover so many new details from this time that the public hadn’t yet known
Ambinder: The National Security Archive at George Washington University (and Nate Jones, especially) helped uncover a number of previously classified documents that were directly relevant. My own FOIA requests, and research, and interviews, filled in the rest.
RCB: What is the main insight you want readers to take away from your book?
Ambinder: Choose your presidents wisely. As voters, ask candidates to explain to you what they know about nuclear weapons, nuclear decision-making, and our war plans.
RCB: What implications does your book suggest for how we look at nuclear war today?
Ambinder: Our nuclear command and control system will always be about 10 years behind the point at which it is spoof-proof from adversaries and will work at all times and under all circumstances. Right now, a lot of the communication pathways remain unsecured and I worry most about the information that gets to the president about impending attacks. This is an imperfect system of systems which is designed to go off UNLESS a president stops it. I like the image of the president being the safety catch, rather than the triggerer. The book also raises the question about whether our nuclear arms treaties are truly making us safer. We seem to trade numbers of weapons for higher quality, more deadly weapons — and a doctrine that makes it easier to use them. I’m not sure that’s wise.
RCB: In light of the unthinkable tragedy that almost happened 35 years ago, what was your reaction as you watched Putin and President Trump interact in Helsinki?
Ambinder: When Reagan met Mikhail Gorbachev for the first time in 1985, the two leaders had prepared extensively and knew a lot about each other. Hawks in the U.S. worried that Reagan might be outmaneuvered by Gorbachev, and perhaps he was, initially. But the two developed a real friendship that led to lasting reductions in nuclear armaments. Trump and Putin are not equals. Trump did not prepare for the meeting. His action seemed to be guided by his personal self-interest rather than by a real commitment to solve our problems in Syria, the Ukraine, and elsewhere. Trump ain’t a Reagan.
