The United States, Russia and Nuclear Peace

Stephen J. Cimbala

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030380878
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030380885
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book analyzes the United States and Russia's nuclear arms control and deterrence relationships and how these countries must lead current and prospective efforts to support future nuclear arms control and nonproliferation.  The second nuclear age, following the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, poses new challenges with respect to nuclear-strategic stability, deterrence and nonproliferation.  The spread of nuclear weapons in Asia, and the potential for new nuclear weapons states in the Middle East, create new possible axes of conflict potentially stressful to the existing world order.  Other uncertainties include the interest of major powers in developing a wider spectrum of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, possibly for use in limited nuclear wars, and the competitive technologies for antimissile defenses being developed and deployed by the United States and Russia.  Other technology challenges, including the implications of cyberwar for nuclear deterrence and crisis management, are also considered.  Political changes also matter.  The early post-Cold War hopes for the emergence of a global pacific security community, excluding the possibility of major war, have been dashed by political conflict between Russia and NATO, by the roiled nature of American domestic politics with respect to international security, and by a more assertive and militarily competent China. Additionally, the study includes suggestions for both analysis and policy in order to prevent the renewed U.S.-Russian nuclear arms race and competition in new technologies. This volume would be ideal for graduate students, researchers, scholars and anyone who is interested in nuclear policy, international studies, and Russian politics. 

© The Author(s) 2020

S. J. CimbalaThe United States, Russia and Nuclear Peacehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38088-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Nuclear Learning from the Past: “Able Archer” and the 1983 War Scare

Stephen J. Cimbala¹

(1)

Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Penn State University (Brandywine), Media, PA, USA

Stephen J. Cimbala

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

1.1 Introduction

Between 1979 and 1983, relations between the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ) and the Soviet Union deteriorated gradually due to disagreements and controversies growing out of Cold War rivalry. Some Soviet leaders convinced themselves that there was a nontrivial likelihood of a US or NATO nuclear first use or first strike in the near future, and Soviet intelligence agencies were tasked to anticipate it. A NATO exercise in November of 1983, taking place in this hothouse atmosphere, lent itself to misperceptions of American and NATO intentions on account of its realism and some Soviet mind sets. The following discussion revisits the 1983 “war scare” episode by (1), reviewing high water marks in the political context leading up to the 1983 “war scare” situation, (2), considering quantitative evidence on US and Soviet strategic nuclear force structures and possible operational performances and (3) deriving from this analysis certain conclusions about the “war scare” of 1983 and its wider significance.

1.2 Operation “RYAN”

In May 1981, Soviet KGB Chairman and future Communist Party General Secretary Yuri Andropov addressed a KGB conference in Moscow. He told his startled listeners that the new American administration of President Ronald Reagan was actively preparing for nuclear war. The possibility of a nuclear first strike by the United States was a real one. Andropov announced that, for the first time ever, the KGB and GRU (main intelligence directorate of the Soviet Armed Forces general staff) were ordered to work together in a global intelligence operation named Raketno Yadernoye Napadeniye (Nuclear Missile Attack).¹ During the next three years or so, the Soviet intelligence services were tasked to collect a variety of indicators, including political, military and economic information, suggestive of any US and NATO intent to launch a nuclear first strike. “RYAN” was, according to some sources, the largest intelligence operation conducted in time of peace in Soviet history.²

Collection of indicators continued well into 1984 and was contributory to the partial Soviet leadership paranoia that outran even the normal suspicions of intelligence professionals in Moscow Center. In an attachment to a Center directive to KGB Residents in NATO capitals in February 1983, it was stated that the threat of an immediate nuclear attack has acquired “an especial degree of urgency”.³ KGB were tasked to detect and assess signs of preparation for “RYAN” in political, military, economic and other sectors. The attachment noted that the United States maintained a large portion of its strategic retaliatory forces in a state of operational readiness. Soviet intelligence estimated that all American ICBMs, 70 percent of US “naval nuclear facilities” and 30 percent of the American strategic bomber force were alerted and capable of rapid response. Thus, according to the instructions in the attachment, it was imperative to detect US or NATO decisions or preparations for war as far ahead of D-Day as possible.

The authors go into considerable detail summarizing US and NATO systems for military alert, including the aspects related to nuclear weapons.⁴ Information about the US Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) for nuclear war, and about NATO’s general defense and nuclear support plans, was specifically emphasized in the tasking from Center to the various residencies. Uncovering of the process leading to a decision for war by the US and its NATO allies, and of the related measures by those countries to prepare for war, was imperative: it would enable Soviet leaders “to increase the so-called period of anticipation essential for the Soviet Union to take retaliatory measures”.⁵

What had brought the Soviet Union to this brink of pessimism and near fatalism about US intentions and, in the case of Andropov, nearly apocalyptic doomsaying? A series of events treated in isolation by political actors at the time apparently combined, in unexpected and potentially dysfunctional ways, to produce a mentality among some members of the Soviet high command that shifted policy expectations in Moscow tectonically from 1979 through 1984. If so, the sequence of events and their impact on Soviet decision-makers fulfill the law of unanticipated consequences that often appears in social and political decision-making. This “law” is well known to social scientists and everyday practitioners of the arts of politics. It says that some of the effects of any decision or action will be unexpected and unpredicted, and that some of these unexpected and unpredicted effects may be contrary to the policy intent of the original decision-makers. This problem of unanticipated consequences certainly applies to the possibility of a US-Soviet crisis slide in 1983, since the last thing that either intended was an actual outbreak of war.

1.3 Intermediate Missiles

In December 1979 NATO took a decision to modernize its intermediate nuclear missile force (INF) by deploying 572 new cruise and ballistic missiles in five European countries beginning in November 1983. This “dual track” decision also called for negotiations with the Soviet Union with the objective of limiting or eliminating its SS-20 intermediate range, mobile ballistic missiles first deployed in 1977. The Soviets were strongly opposed to the NATO INF modernization: the connection between Soviet’s SS-20 deployments and NATO’s theater nuclear force modernization was one of challenge and response from NATO’s perspective, but not in the Soviet view.⁶

Moscow mounted an aggressive active measures campaign through a variety of European peace movements and in other ways in order to stop the scheduled NATO deployments. The Soviet campaign failed to divide the Western alliance or to dissuade it from beginning its deployments on the original timetable. US ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) first arrived in England in mid-November 1983, and on November 23 Pershing II intermediate range ballistic missiles were first deployed in West Germany.⁷ The Soviet military establishment was most concerned about the Pershings. P...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Nuclear Learning from the Past: “Able Archer” and the 1983 War Scare
• 2. New Start and Beyond: Nuclear Modernization and US-Russian Nuclear Arms Control
• 3. Missile Defenses and US-Russian Nuclear Arms Control: Technology, Politics and Deterrence
• 4. China and Nuclear Arms Control
• 5. Nuclear Arms Race in Asia: Challenges and Containment
• 6. The Trump Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review and Presidential Nuclear Prerogative
• 7. Limiting Nuclear War: Mission Impossible, Inadvisable or Unavoidable?
• 8. Cyber War and Nuclear Deterrence: A Manageable Partnership?
• 9. Theory and Nuclear Proliferation in the Twenty-First Century: The Limits of Realism
• 10. Toward Nuclear Minimalism? Minimum Deterrence and Its Alternatives
• 11. Conclusion
• Back Matter