For most people who grew up in the ’80s, the year 1983 probably doesn’t stand out in any particular way. At least, no more than any other year from that decade. As time goes on, however, and more information is released to the public, that year is beginning to take on a sinister tone. That’s because we’re starting to learn that in the latter half of that year, the United States and the Soviet Union came dangerously close to nuclear war on multiple occasions. These incidents were largely fueled by Soviet paranoia and, later, American ignorance; which without a doubt may be the most volatile combination on Earth.
It all started on September 1st, 1983, when a Soviet interceptor shot down Korean Airlines Flight 007, which killed an American Congressman on board. Diplomatic relations took a turn for the worse between the two nations, and the Soviet military became more paranoid than they had ever been before.
These tensions were largely responsible for the atmosphere of tension that almost caused a nuclear war three weeks later. This incident became rather well known after the end of the Cold War, when it was revealed that a single officer with the Soviet Air Defense Forces prevented World War Three. A signal from a faulty detection system told the officer that the US had just launched a preemptive strike and, fortunately for the human race, he chose to ignore it. However, that wasn’t the only close call from that time period.
In November of that year, the United States started a massive military training exercise in Europe that was code-named Able Archer 83. The ten-day exercise involved 19,000 US troops from across the world and multiple NATO nations.
The point of the exercise was to train our forces on how to transition from a conventional war to a nuclear war, should they ever have to fight the Soviets. Now for the first time, declassified documents have been published by the National Security Archive (a non-government non-profit) which reveal that this training exercise nearly sparked World War Three.
According to the documents, the Soviets were already freaking out about the possibility of a preemptive strike by the US, after 600 Pershing missiles were fielded by NATO. It started out a mere theory, but eventually became conventional wisdom among KGB officials. Everyone believed that our government was preparing to destroy them without cause.
These fears were escalated by the shortcomings of their own defenses, which were falling behind America’s highly capable nuclear arsenal. They came to the conclusion that any first strike against them would completely obliterate their defenses, and leave them with nothing to retaliate with.
So once Able Archer began, they were already on a hair-trigger. Given the scale and the purpose of the operation (which was to train for a nuclear war) the Soviets were convinced that the whole training exercise was a ruse; an attempt to get our forces fully mobilized without raising any alarms. We were essentially simulating the worst fears of the Soviet intelligence community. Warsaw Pact militaries responded by pulling nukes from storage and sending them to delivery sites, as well as suspending most routine military flights so that these aircraft would be available for combat.
Despite these actions, the United States was completely clueless. Nobody in the chain of command, including the President, had any idea that the Soviets were losing their minds over our actions. In fact, the military was aware that the Soviets were on a higher state of alert, but didn’t think anything of it. No changes were made to our defense posture.
Our military completely dropped the ball and, ultimately, that’s what prevented war from breaking out. Since our military never thought anything was amiss, they never escalated a situation that they were completely unaware of. The training exercise came and went without anyone going to war.
So in a nutshell, our lack of knowledge led us to conduct a training exercise that almost provoked a nuclear war, and our lack of awareness prevented that war from occurring. It is by nothing less than dumb luck that we are still breathing today. Hopefully, the United States and Russia will look back on this incident and remember how close we came to the brink, before they conduct any more of their provocative training exercises in Eastern Europe.
Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshua’s reports at Facebook or on his personal Twitter. Joshua’s website is Strange Danger .
There are endless layers of deception in geopolitics and a tremendous amount of compartmentalization in the military making it nearly impossible to know what the game is at the top of the pyramid.
Case in point is the Cuban missile crisis that was seemingly poised to also become a large conflict. Yet, behind the curtain the US plutocracy had been funding, supporting, and transferring technology to the Bolsheviks and later the Soviets to later include Kissinger as Nixon’s National Security Adviser transferring sophisticated missile technology to the Soviets. The Soviet leadership knew very well that the public political posturing in the US against the “communist threat” was a show of layered deceptions, a wink and nod system of grand geopolitical theater, which must have been the reason the Soviets publicly backed down in the Cuban crisis while, behind the scenes, a quid pro quo swap took place whereby NATO missiles were moved away from USSR borders in exchange for the scraping of the Cuban missile program. Isn’t it an interesting coincidence that Trilateralist Kissinger has been a long time friend and close adviser to Putin? The NWO elites don’t leave anything to chance, control is always paramount to all other considerations. WW3 is the final war against our minds and fear based control is their main tool.
While I mostly agree with you, putting the Bolsheviks into power was NOT about communism, but rather about installing a form of government that was bound to pit Russia against most of the world. The elite sensed the growing power of Russia.
In effect, they hung an albatross around Russia’s neck.
As far as the shootdown of KAL007 (007, get it?), the U.S. had two, and possibly three radar planes flying in formation with KAL007 in a manner that returned a single radar blip with KAL007. When Russia took the bait and launched interceptors, the radar planes ducked under radar range. The Soviets saw only the airliner from that point on. They got bamboozled.
The KAL plane was similarly bamboozled – they could paint the radar planes with their radar, but failed to recognize the setup.
The Soviets did NOT shoot the plane down, but fired at one of the military decoys, which introduced false targets.
The KAL plane was forced down to a military base on Sakhalin Island. History loses the occupants at this time.
GA representative Lanny McDonald, a passenger and rising honest conservative, was lost forever to Cold War machinations.
There was probably a prisoner exchange, but McDonald was left to rot in Soviet custody.
I agree with your albatross comment. I didn’t specify the aim of TPTB supporting the Bolsheviks other than to later infer regardless of what construct they have their hands on, it’s always about control. Sutton’s assessment of the elites controlling Russia to keep it from becoming an economic competitor (socialism destroying innovation) and to steer it into a totalitarian entity to later merge with the west is probably consistent with your view. Always multidimensional agendas including a nemesis to rationalize the military industrial complex and social control.
I assume you know Congressman McDonald was very vocal and articulate about the Trilateral Commission and the western elites in general working steadily towards shifting the US to the left in preparation for a World Government system they were engineering. By all appearances McDonald was assassinated in the takedown of KAL007. Who knew what of the plot is something we’ll likely never know. More compartmentalization.
BTW, there’s a terrific clip on youtube of McDonald outing the Trilateralists and globalists on the old television program Crossfire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puNCkwjuxJ0
Yes. I do know.
Google “release kidnapped passengers KAL flight 007”