19 - Able Archer and the nuclear war scare of 1983
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- čas přidán 25. 08. 2024
- Today we're talking to Francesca Akhtar who holds a BA Hons in American Studies with 1st class honours from Canterbury Christ Christ Church University in Kent, and a Masters degree in US history & Politics from the Institute of the Americas, University College London.
Her main research interests are US Cold War foreign policy, intelligence history and defence.
Francesca has written a dissertation entitled “The most dangerous Soviet-American confrontation since the Cuban Missile Crisis?” An analysis of the origins, nature and impact of the Able Archer 83 incident .
I am delighted to welcome Francesca Akhtar to Cold War Conversations.
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The Mitrovkin Archives shed some light on this incident. The culture inside the KGB was paranoid and conspiracy-centred.
I was born in 1983. So I don't have any recollections of it but still, this was certainly one of the pivotal moments of the Cold War. The Soviet War Scare was real. Luckilly the west knew about it via Oleg Gordievsky.
No-one in the oublic knew about this until the early/mid 1990's. That's when I became aware and I was particularly interested in this type of thing.
1983 was a crazy year. The Stanislav Petrov crisis, Fleet Ex 83, Kal 007, and Able Archer.
It was indeed. We have a follow up episode planned with Francesca about some new discoveries.
I remember Reagan had the nickname Ronnie Raygun because of S.D.I .
Our military budgets are even more out of control now, but Reagan did a lot to start it
Out of control? Nope!
We need to double defence spending
the pentagon just failed it's 6th audit in a row. that's pretty out of control!@@ChillingCrowley
I’d like to know more about the Korean airline incident. My understanding is that the recordings show that the Soviet pilot gave the Korean pilot multiple warnings and even fired tracer bullets in front of the airline but the Korean pilot just ignored him. So, as you can see the Russian say in a CZcams video, he “ did his duty” and shot the bastard down.
Would be pleased if someone could enlighten me on a few more details.
For ignored substitute “was unaware of and didn’t hear”, the tracers could be very difficult to see from an aircraft cockpit. The pilot admitted looking into the windows and seeing passengers.