The War Game That Could Have Ended the World. A military exercise staged in the early ’80s almost triggered World War Three. Secret documents reveal what happened.
On November 7, 1983, around 100 senior military officers gathered at Nato headquarters in Brussels to ‘fight’ World War Three. The annual simulation, known as Able Archer, came at the end of a large-scale
conventional exercise – Autumn Forge – involving tens of thousands of Nato troops across western Europe. Later that day, the Nato commanders left their building and went home, congratulating themselves on another successful – albeit sobering – exercise. What Western governments only discovered later is that Able Archer 83 came perilously close to instigating a real nuclear war.
“There’s evidence at the highest levels of the Soviet military that they were finding it increasingly difficult to tell drills from an actual attack,” says Nate Jones, director of the Freedom of Information Act Project for the National Security Archive in Washington DC, an independent non-profit organisation that advocates for open government. “We’re now amassing a collection of documents confirming that the Soviets were really scared the West would launch a nuclear strike.”
The document, produced in 1990 by the US President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, is entitled “The Soviet War Scare.” With only a few short sections redacted, the 109-page report details the
unintended consequences of Able Archer 83. It makes for sobering reading (you can read the entire report here).
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