NATO’s war game “Trident Juncture 2015”, that commenced on October 21- one of a series of long planned war exercises by the Atlantic Alliance- is due for completion in the Mediterranean and Europe on November 6.
“Trident Juncture”, billed as the “largest and most ambitious [NATO exercise] in over a decade” involves all 28 ΝΑΤΟ members plus “partner” countries according to NATO, Australia (!), Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Finland, Sweden and Ukraine. More than 36,000 troops, 140 aircraft, 60 ships and 7 submarines are involved, with Portugal, Spain and Italy providing the venues for the action.
This NATO exercise has been receiving extensive publicity as a “routine and readiness” one and as a visible way of expressing solidarity and fortitude amongst the NATO allies and their “partner” friends in the face of challenges. And the western mass and electronic media have been reproducing, uncritically for the most part and in a “copy- paste” fashion to boot, NATO’s announcements and press releases, highlighting especially those of American officials.
“Trident Juncture 2015” is anything but a “routine and readiness” exercise. On the contrary it takes the world eerily back to the most dangerous war game of the Cold War and, in fact to the most dangerous Cold War crisis, after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which brought the world to the brink of a nuclear Armageddon. The reference here is to the biggest NATO war game of the Cold War code-named “Able Archer”, that took place from the 2nd to the 11th of November 1983 and involved analogous to the 2015 war game forces- 40,000 NATO troops and the rest.
NATO’s announcements and subliminal propaganda avoid any references to, and make no associations between “Trident Juncture 2015” and “Able Archer” of 1983. But these are there and they can now be linked by a document of the highest order declassified after years of persistence by researchers from the National Security Archive of George Washington University. On October 24- ironically three days after “Trident Juncture” commenced- the National Security Archive posted on its web site a truly amazing document, a report dated February 15, 1990 by the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). Entitled “The Soviet ‘War Scare’“, the 109 page document appraises and evaluates the significance and consequences of “Able Archer” and makes a truly scary assessment: it confirms the thesis held for years by researchers, scholars but also by high ranking American officials, that NATO’s “Able Archer” almost led to an “accidental nuclear” war on account of Soviet “fears” and “paranoia”, coupled with the inability of US intelligence to properly understand and evaluate the Soviet decision making that was prompted by “Able Archer”, and events and other war games that preceded it.
The double historical irony is that the organisers of “Able Archer”, the Americans that is, realised but belatedly, that the war game of 1983 created such an insecurity anxiety to the Soviet leadership that, in the American “post mortem” assessment, the Soviets were convicted that a preemptive nuclear attack would be launched against them. The Soviets reached the conclusion that an attack on them was imminent on the basis of their world wide intelligence operation they dubbed RYaN (based on Soviet acronyms meaning “nuclear missile attack”). RYaN had been launched in 1981. By November 1883 the Soviets were convinced that the attack would be launched under the guise of “Able Archer”, an exercise so sophisticated the likes of which had not been seen until then. (Suffice to say that the American world wide war machine had been placed on DefCon 1, meaning “warning of imminent attack” and “last stage to launch”). On the basis of their “threat estimates” the Soviets came to the verge of deciding to preempt the “pre-emptors” and launch their nuclear missiles first! It is perhaps appropriate to note here that the 1983 Soviet leadership, with Yuri Andropov as Secretary General of the Communist Party, experienced fully the Second World War, which for them started in 1941 with “Operation Barbarossa”- the preemptive Nazi attack on the Soviet Union.
For the Americans, the most critical aspect of the February 1990 PFIAB evaluation and conclusion was that in 1983 the American “Intelligence Community” experienced its biggest national security intelligence failure. As Armin Rosen aptly puts it , “[t]here was a major nuclear war scare in 1983. And American intelligence missed it”. (Business Insider, “This declassified US Intelligence report from 1990 is one of the most terrifying things you’ll ever read”, October 28, 2015.) The Americans failed to “read” correctly the Soviet security dilemma that they themselves brought about through a provocative but otherwise “routine and readiness” exercise (the “imaginary” scenario of “Able Archer” called for East-West conflict in which “Orange”, namely the Soviets, delivered arms to Syria, coupled with unrest in Eastern Europe!). The world would have gone nuclear with American intelligence in the dark!
Can the 1983 scenario repeat itself today? Yes, it can! It should be underlined here that in 1983 the American and Soviet national security systems functioned “catastrophically successful”. Had both “systems” been left to themselves Armageddon would have resulted. In the 1983 case we read that on November 7, and as the NATO exercise reached its escalation point, the Soviets placed their forces in in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe on a war footing, prohibited all non military flights over its territories and were ready to preempt their would be attackers.
Luckily for the world, on the American side Lt. Gen. Leonard Perroots, U.S. Air Force assistant chief of staff for intelligence in Europe, who managed Soviet reactions to “Able Archer” and had the authority to “counter” Soviet moves, concluded that “enough was enough” in the escalation process. So he did not double down. This was a personal decision that went contrary to the system. As he evaluated the circumstances he feared that matters could very well get out of hand. Perroots move saved us all. (On 26-27 September1983 an analogous event took place on the Soviet side that received more publicity. Stanislav Petrov, a Lt. Col. in military intelligence violated Soviet protocol and refused to order a nuclear counter attack when Soviet radars “detected”, mistakenly as it turned out, incoming American intercontinental missiles).
Today the critical question raised by “Trident Juncture 2015” is, what is it all about. Who is the enemy? Against what state or states is NATO practising on land, water and on paper? Officials say Russia is not the target. According to the scenario, a non-NATO country called Lakuta, located in an unstable region of the world, Cerasia, is afflicted by political instability, internal ethic conflicts and is threatened with a “blatant invasion” by a “highly adaptive” neighbour. Regional competition for scare water resources is underway.
The official NATO position is that the scenario concerns a country or counties in the Horn of Africa. And that consequently it bears no relation to the Ukraine or Syrian crises. For their part Moscow and Putin respond by saying that whoever wants something must also want its consequences and that NATO states in Europe must know that Russia will defend its national interests. And when recently Russia intervened militarily in Syria, at the request of Damascus, its military launched , in addition, 28 guided missiles against jihadists in Syria from their Black Sea fleet. The Russian message, especial to the European members of NATO was as unequivocal as the one of NATO about…Lakuta.
Herein lies the problem for us all and for humanity. It is emphasised that de-escalation in 1983 was consequent to to a contrarian decision by an individual who defied the “logic” of the system. Moreover in any escalating crisis, human error, patriotic zealotry, ideololypsi and paranoia, of which there are plenty in Washington and Moscow, can bring about unintended consequences. Provocations by third countries affected by a crisis cannot be discounted either. And we are seeing plenty of those in the Ukrainian and Syrian crises today.
Concerning specifically the 1983 crisis, we have since known that once President Reagan was made aware of the Soviet “state of mind” he was aghast that a mere “exercise” could have led to Armageddon. And by his own admission he was really “scared”. ( So was Margaret Thatcher). The traumatic experience of that year convinced him, and he says so in his memoirs, to tone down his anti-Soviet rhetoric and even actively seek the total elimination of the nuclear arsenals of the two superpowers.
Irrespective, nothing positive can come about with “mega” exercises of the likes of “Trident Juncture” by an organisation whose constituent document, the Treaty of Washington of 1949, is a pean to peace, not unlike the Preamble of the UN Charter for the maintenance of international peace and security.
Thus the question posed earlier needs to be repeated. What is NATO really up to with its current war game? Why are 36, 000 troops, 140 aircraft, 60 ships and 7 submarines deployed in the Mediterranean and in Europe? Is the aim to “terrify” the Russians and force them to “modify” their behaviour? Do the members of the Atlantic Alliance really believe that they will succeed where Hitler’s Barbarrossa failed? Do they want another 50 years of renewed Cold War confrontations? Or do they want fewer and a nuclear mushroom in the horizon?
- Delphi Initiative – By Marios L. Evriviades *
- The author is professor of international relations in Athens.
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