▲ 222 points
back
93 comments
But because their masters in Moscow wanted to hear there
was potential for a first-strike, to please their bosses,
that’s what the spies delivered.
“These people were close to the West, they lived in the
West and knew there were no plans for a first strike but
they reported what they were told to report,” Jones
explains.
[...]
It was a dangerously vicious circle. “It’s a failure of
the Soviet system,” says Jones, “Soviet intelligence did
not act rationally.”
I always assumed this was seen as a feature rather than a bug - i.e. that politicians choose and instruct spy agency bosses to be politically compliant, rather than to produce reports that are unbiased and strictly factual.
No, most of the Western governments don't do that. The reason "coalition of the willing" was so thin is that aside the US and the UK few bought that. France have threatened veto in the UN, so it was not put to the vote… that's also how the whole "freedom fries" idiocy took off. And the rest of continental Europe was immensely sceptical.
France had no problem supporting the conflicts in Libya and Syria that sought to accomplish similar outcomes as in Iraq (remove & replace Gaddafi and al-Assad). In fact, France has routinely urged Trump and the US to remain engaged in the Syria conflict.
"Emmanuel Macron to urge Donald Trump to keep US in Syria during White House talks"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/23/emmanuel-macron-...
> France had no problem supporting the conflicts in Libya and Syria that sought to accomplish similar outcomes as in Iraq (remove & replace Gaddafi and al-Assad).
And if the US had argued for invading Iraq on that basis, maybe we'd've supported it. But of course we're going to oppose an invasion when its proponents are basing their arguments on a blatant lie like the 45 minute claim.
(If the US/UK thought there was a good case for invasion on genuine grounds, why did they feel the need to lie?)
> And the rest of continental Europe was immensely sceptical.
You mean: sat by and did nothing.
Everyone's wailing about US <> Saudi relations with regard to Khashoggi. Was anyone suggesting trade relations with the US should be dropped due to their war on Iraq, which, by all accounts, killed more than one person.
Coalition of the complicit.
The highest level politicians that took us into Iraq knew there were no WMD. They merely needed a good enough excuse to do it.
We've got four star general - US Presidential candidate, and NATO Supreme Allied Commander right before 9/11 - Wesley Clark admitting it in public on YouTube. I'll never understand why the most important policy admission of the last 30 years is intentionally ignored in all discussion of what the West is doing in Iraq, Syria, Libya, et al. This is the Western powers - led by the US - looking to strip Russia's power out of the Middle East (or at least break it). According to Clark, particularly before China completes its rise to power (which would present a demand to dilute focus, weakening the ability to challenge Russia's strategic goals). These proxy conflicts haven't stopped for a single day since WW2. Don't take my word for it, or Clark's for that matter, just look at the powers in Syria wrestling over who gets to keep or acquire influence (the US/West v Russia).
It's the politician's syllogism:
- We must do something
- This is something
- Therefore, we must do this.
After 9/11 the US had to do something, Afghanistan wasn't enough, so do Iraq.
So, they choose Iraq randomly?
The idea of 'doing something' about Iraq was a lot older.
9/11 was just the excuse. When you read about the subject it's interesting to realize how many people in Washington was against that war, including the Pentagon and the State Department, but powerful interest prevailed.
From https://www.haaretz.com/1.4764706:
"Is the Iraq war the great neoconservative war? It's the war the neoconservatives wanted, Friedman says. It's the war the neoconservatives marketed. Those people had an idea to sell when September 11 came, and they sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the masses demanded. This is a war of an elite. Friedman laughs: I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened. Still, it's not all that simple, Friedman retracts [..]"
They did Iraq right with Afghanistan because they had the war machine out of the box and the population revved up to allow it. If they had waited, the public and Congress would have been against it. Obama tested the waters for doing a larger war with Syria in 2013 (which would have attempted to ensure the removal of al-Assad), too much time had passed since 9/11 and people were very war weary by then. With almost no support for more big wars Congress shot it down and Obama abruptly backed down.
Sept 2013: "Obama Seeks Approval by Congress for Strike in Syria"
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/world/middleeast/syria.ht...
They already did something before 9/11 and I think that was a retaliation against an attack to a US embassy. And list goes on.
I can strongly recommend the book "The Spy and the Traitor" about Oleg Gordievsky and MI6:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/279/279582/the-spy-and-the-t...
It goes into quite a lot of detail about what it was like to work in the KGB at that time.
It's most definitely a bug. If you want a reliable government, you need reliable intelligence that does not fabricate excuses for war.
Government is not about serving the politicians, it's about serving the people.
Mobile-readable quote:
> But because their masters in Moscow wanted to hear there was potential for a first-strike, to please their bosses, that’s what the spies delivered.
> “These people were close to the West, they lived in the West and knew there were no plans for a first strike but they reported what they were told to report,” Jones explains.
> [...]
> It was a dangerously vicious circle. “It’s a failure of the Soviet system,” says Jones, “Soviet intelligence did not act rationally.”
While that may be true in many cases the example of Iraq and WMDs is more nuanced than most realize. The CIA was not reaching the conclusions that the Bush administration wanted and so Bush and co. created the Office of Special plans in order to deliberately stovepipe (misinterpret) the intelligence.
I'm pretty sure they just tell them: -We need something... find it or make it, I don't care...
And then there was Reagan's "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."[0] I was in Moscow when that went public. The Soviet government was not amused.
Edit: Also, Charles Stross' A Colder War.[1]
0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_begin_bombing_in_five_minut...
Removed from that quote is context of course, which is extremely relevant, but that didn't stop the media from making sure they induced a profiteering panic among the people that subscribed to them despite the outcome being possible nuclear death.
Well, of course, he was joking. Just a sound check.
I have no clue who leaked it, in what order. From a reprint of contemporaneous coverage, I gather that many technicians heard the remark.[0] And eventual news coverage mainly served to put rumors at rest.
0) https://web.archive.org/web/20180917150154/https://www.thegu...
Of course, the ending of A Colder War is far far worse than everyone simply dying in a nuclear war...
Deutschland 83 is a fantastic show based on these events.
I really enjoyed that too. I was a teenager then and although in the UK I was very aware of the military and world situation. That series was a very good reminder of what the world felt like then.
We still have the chance - minor Ukraine/Russia navy conflict yesterday so far resulted in nation wide martial law in Ukraine triggered on today. I'd not put it past Putin to not let the crisis go waste and for example "solve" the Ukraine/Russia Azov sea issues by making the Azov sea outright into an internal Russian sea which would naturally raise the tensions with the NATO/Europe/US and others. (Also, given the extremely low rating (barely above 10% on a good day) of the current Ukraine President just 4 months ahead of the elections, the escalation of the situation with the associated rise of the nationalistic populism is in his political interests too.)
I don't see how an incursion on Ukraine would result in a war with NATO. Ukraine's problem is precisely that it's a formerly neutral party and not part of NATO. In fact, from a Russian POV the reason for the annexation of the Crimean peninsula were fears fueled by Ukraine moving closer to NATO and the EU, violating its neutrality and jeopardising Russian military operations within Ukraine.
I'm not justifying the annexation -- it was clearly illegal and the circumstances of the (also illegal) vote suggest fraud -- but Ukraine is not part of NATO and even an all-out undeniable Russian invasion wouldn't trigger a war with NATO.
Is it in NATO's interests if Russia fully invades or goes to war with Ukraine? No, of course not. Is it a violation of international law? Most likely so. But would this trigger any international treaties that would result in WW3? Hell no.
WW1 and WW2 weren't just escalated because The Good Guys were unhappy with the aggressors. They were escalated because of international treaties forcing nations to declare war in retaliation to the aggressors.
In WW2 the invasion of Poland triggered the defensive pact with Britain and France who declared war after setting an ultimatum. As for WW1, I think most people have heard of the complete clusterfuck of international alliances and naivety that resulted in that escalation[1].
Ukraine is not part of the EU. Ukraine is not part of NATO. Strategic position aside, there's little reason for NATO to get involved as long as Russia has no intentions of moving further westwards. Even if the US invaded directly and declared war on Russia this wouldn't trigger NATO as NATO is a defensive pact, not an aggressive pact. It would of course result in a lot of diplomatic tensions with so many US military bases being located in the EU.
While a war might not be triggered in a WW1-esque "if X then Y" sense it may very well happen anyway. Ukraine is as entitled to it's sovereignty as any other nation. Just letting the Russians steamroll Ukraine is not exactly a good solution either. Germany, France, England, etc. are going to (rightfully) have a very, very hard time tolerating (i.e. not coming to the aid of Ukraine) that kind of belligerent behavior in Europe. If there were Russian tanks in Kiev the NATO states east of Germany would all but demand a military reaction because of the dangerous to them precedent that allowing an invasion (even if the invaded nation is not a NATO member) to go unopposed would set.
What about the Budapest Memorandum?
Not nation wide technically speaking - in 10 oblasts(regions) out of 24
Not mentioned in the article, and almost certainly not known to NATO authorities at the time, but Able Archer 83 came a few weeks after the "1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident"[0]. See also "Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted nuclear war, has died"[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...
I find calling the potential deployment of nuclear missiles at this point ”world war three” slightly misleading. A war has a beginning and an end. There is no end other than the end of the world as we know it on the other side of such strikes.
As the exercise concluded in the article, ”Most of the world was destroyed. Billions were dead. Civilisation ended.”
Sadly a nuclear war is "highly" survivable as long as you know to duck and cover once you see the flash.
I say "sadly" because it's not as big a deterrent as we thought.
You can read how to avoid 90% of the deaths here : http://www.ki4u.com/goodnews.htm
This is misleading nonsense. In a real war most targets would be barraged by MIRVs, some of which would be ground bursts specifically designed to maximise the effects of fall out plumes across otherwise survivable areas.
One way or another, your initial duck-and-cover survival won't last long.
If you'd left it at the first sentence I'd have read it as nicely pitched sarcasm.
If it's a single Hiroshima scale device, sure, it'll probably help some. If countries are exchanging their deterrent missiles, no, you're not going to avoid 90% of the deaths.
This all seems very similar to the public information services from Raymond Briggs rather depressing sequel to "The Snowman", "When The Wind Blows".
One of the best documentaries ever made; "Able Archer: the brink of apocalypse" conveniently on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ciy5R-tLiE
And yes, this should be a warning to people in current year.
1983. The screaiming height of the nuclear scare. I remember it all to well. A very clear and present danger, a daily threat we lived under, some of us aware, most people probably not really.
I saw The Day After in a Copenhagen cinema at what I believe was its European premiere, also exactly 35 years ago one of these days. Going home, my young impressionable self was even more spooked than usual: The thing was real, might happen any time, would presumably be worse than film, worse than imaginable.
To this day, I actually shiver when I read of Able Archer and realize how closely the shit flew past the fan the very same week.
If you want to relive the terror I suggest reading the Pulitzer Prize winner "The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy". While its focus is on the Cold War it's still relevant today.
https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Hand-Untold-Dangerous-Legacy/dp/...
Mutually assured destruction makes sense if humans and information is perfect .... but it's not so it seems more like it is just a matter of time until it happens.
It is interesting to see how this plays out as the start of an exercise. I remember growing up in North Dakota and when the air force bases would run drills the sky would be filled with planes flying in formation .... no way you could tell if it was real or not (other than there not being any launches from the local ICBMs...).
>Mutually assured destruction makes sense if humans and information is perfect .... but it's not so it seems more like it is just a matter of time until it happens.
Or not. If it is chance that prevents our self-destruction then you would expect it to already have happened. Seems like there is 'something' (for lack of a better word) to prevent it. Whatever it is, it seems to work and we're still here.
I'm not sure the lack of self destruction in a short time frame means much, the events that have occurred were one decision away from the destruction part.
My takeaway from this is that governments do not always act rationally, and therefore MAD doctrine, which assumes that the actors are rational, is a dangerous nonsense.
What's the alternative to MAD? We still have it. People have calmed down, but it remains.
I always took it to be a description of the state of play once nukes exist.
The alternative to MAD is slow, painstaking process of nuclear disarmament. Mutually-assured disarmament, if you will.
On a smaller scale, that is, like michaelt pointed out, party of every government that has authoritarian figures in it. When you reel the people around you with fear, you will get inaccurate information. That is one of the reasons why, if you don't build an extensive surveillance state that works really well, such governments usually don't last long.
What this article fails to mention, is that Able Archer 83 was a response to Zapad-81 exercise held 2 years before. [0]
Everyone really needs to stop with any actions that could be misinterpreted. This is how World War 1 started, a war which no one wanted.
> a war which no one wanted
History would like a word with you: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/first...
I find it eerie that the movie War Games came out the same year, actually five months before.
> 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.
You'd think that NATO was just having their quiet simulation and those silly Soviets misinterpreted, right?
What the article fails to acknowledge is the deliberate provocations targeting USSR at the same time as the military exercise - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83#Psychological_o... :
"Psychological operations (PSYOP) by the United States began in mid-February 1981 and continued intermittently until 1983. These included a series of clandestine naval operations that stealthily accessed waters near the Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom (GIUK) gap, and the Barents, Norwegian, Black, and Baltic seas, demonstrating how close NATO ships could get to critical Soviet military bases. American bombers also flew directly towards Soviet airspace, peeling off at the last moment, sometimes several times per week. These near-penetrations were designed to test Soviet radar vulnerability as well as demonstrate US capabilities in a nuclear war"