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How a war game brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster
Source: The Observer
How a war game brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster
Jamie Doward
The Observer, Saturday 2 November 2013 16.43 GMT
Chilling new evidence that Britain and America came close to provoking the Soviet Union into launching a nuclear attack has emerged in former classified documents written at the height of the cold war.
Cabinet memos and briefing papers released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that a major war games exercise, Operation Able Art, conducted in November 1983 by the US and its Nato allies was so realistic it made the Russians believe that a nuclear strike on its territory was a real possibility.
When intelligence filtered back to the Tory government on the Russians' reaction to the exercise, the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, ordered her officials to lobby the Americans to make sure that such a mistake could never happen again. Anti-nuclear proliferation campaigners have credited the move with changing how the UK and the US thought about their relationship with the Soviet Union and beginning a thaw in relations between east and west.
The papers were obtained by Peter Burt, director of the Nuclear Information Service (NIS), an organisation that campaigns against nuclear proliferation, who said that the documents showed just how risky the cold war became for both sides.
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Jamie Doward
The Observer, Saturday 2 November 2013 16.43 GMT
Chilling new evidence that Britain and America came close to provoking the Soviet Union into launching a nuclear attack has emerged in former classified documents written at the height of the cold war.
Cabinet memos and briefing papers released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that a major war games exercise, Operation Able Art, conducted in November 1983 by the US and its Nato allies was so realistic it made the Russians believe that a nuclear strike on its territory was a real possibility.
When intelligence filtered back to the Tory government on the Russians' reaction to the exercise, the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, ordered her officials to lobby the Americans to make sure that such a mistake could never happen again. Anti-nuclear proliferation campaigners have credited the move with changing how the UK and the US thought about their relationship with the Soviet Union and beginning a thaw in relations between east and west.
The papers were obtained by Peter Burt, director of the Nuclear Information Service (NIS), an organisation that campaigns against nuclear proliferation, who said that the documents showed just how risky the cold war became for both sides.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/02/nato-war-game-nuclear-disaster
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How a war game brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster (Original Post)
Eugene
Nov 2013
OP
indepat
(20,899 posts)1. November 1983: wonder whose watch this was this on, not that playing major war games so
realistic the Soviets believed that a nuclear strike on its territory were a possibility, would be provocative or irresponsible for, you see, hard-nosed strong-on-national-defense and tough-on-communism Republican presidents don't do irresponsible?
Galileo126
(2,016 posts)2. It was called "Operation Able Archer"
...just to clarify.
There was a pretty good documentary on the Military Channel a while back regarding this, and the series of misinterpretations on both sides almost ended up in mushroom clouds.
Pretty. Damned. Scary.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)3. never let a Bircher take charge
1 2 3 4 5 6
R O N A L D 6
W I L S O N 6
R E A G A N 6
bemildred
(90,061 posts)4. Fucking idiots, all of them.
Like "practicing" shooting yourself in the head with a loaded gun.