page_title: Able Archer 83
section_title: Soviet reaction
hierarchical_section_title: Able Archer 83 / Soviet reaction
caption_attribution_description: English: Ronald Reagan’s July 21, 1987 meeting with MI 6 asset Oleg Gordievsky. Reagan and Gordievsky.
context_page_description: Able Archer 83 is the codename for a command post exercise carried out in November 1983 by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. As with Able Archer exercises from previous years, the purpose of the exercise was to simulate a period of conflict escalation, culminating in the US military attaining a simulated DEFCON 1 coordinated nuclear attack. Coordinated from the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe headquarters in Casteau, Belgium, it involved NATO forces throughout Western Europe, beginning on November 7, 1983, and lasting for five days.
  The 1983 exercise introduced several new elements not seen in previous years, including a new, unique format of coded communication, radio silences, and the participation of heads of government. This increase in realism, combined with deteriorating relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and the anticipated arrival of Pershing II nuclear missiles in Europe, led some members of the Soviet Politburo and military to believe that Able Archer 83 was a ruse of war, obscuring preparations for a genuine nuclear first strike.
context_section_description: The double agent Oleg Gordievsky, whose highest rank was KGB rezident in London, is the only Soviet source ever to have published an account of Able Archer 83. Oleg Kalugin and Yuri Shvets, who were KGB officers in 1983, have published accounts that acknowledge Operation RYaN, but they do not mention Able Archer 83. Gordievsky and other Warsaw Pact intelligence agents were extremely skeptical about a NATO first strike, perhaps because of their proximity to, and understanding of, the West. Nevertheless, agents were ordered to report their observations, not their analysis, and this critical flaw in the Soviet intelligence system—coined by Gordievsky as the "intelligence cycle"—fed the fear of US nuclear aggression.
  Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, who at the time was chief of the main operations directorate of the Soviet General Staff, told Cold War historian Don Orbendorfer that he had never heard of Able Archer. The lack of public Soviet response over Able Archer 83 has led some historians, including Fritz W. Ermarth in his piece, "Observations on the 'War Scare' of 1983 From an Intelligence Perch", to conclude that the Soviet Union did not see Able Archer 83 as posing an immediate threat to the Soviet Union.
caption: President Ronald Reagan and Soviet double agent Oleg Gordievsky.
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