The Brink
President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“An informative and often enthralling book…in the appealing style of Tom Clancy” (Kirkus Reviews) about the 1983 war game that triggered a tense, brittle period of nuclear brinkmanship between the United States and the former Soviet Union.
What happened in 1983 to make the Soviet Union so afraid of a potential nuclear strike from the United States that they sent mobile ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) into the field, placing them on a three-minute alert
Marc Ambinder explains the anxious period between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1982 to 1984, with the “Able Archer ’83” war game at the center of the tension. With astonishing and clarifying new details, he recounts the scary series of the close encounters that tested the limits of ordinary humans and powerful leaders alike. Ambinder provides a comprehensive and chilling account of the nuclear command and control process, from intelligence warnings to the composition of the nuclear codes themselves. And he affords glimpses into the secret world of a preemptive electronic attack that scared the Soviet Union into action. Ambinder’s account reads like a thriller, recounting the spy-versus-spy games that kept both countries—and the world—in check.
From geopolitics in Moscow and Washington, to sweat-caked soldiers fighting in the trenches of the Cold War, to high-stakes war games across NATO and the Warsaw Pact, “Ambinder’s account of a serious threat of global annihilation…is spellbinding…a masterpiece of recent history” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). The Brink serves as the definitive intelligence, nuclear, and national security history of one of the most precarious times in recent memory and “shows the consequences of nuclear buildups, sometimes-careless language, and nervous leaders. Now, more than ever, those consequences matter” (USA TODAY).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Ambinder's account of a serious threat of global annihilation stemming from a 1983 NATO war exercise is spellbinding. Ambinder lays out the grave weaknesses in America's nuclear command-and-control structure in the early 1980s: the process the president was supposed to use to make decisions about whether to launch nuclear missiles was much too long, and the U.S.'s early warning system was unreliable. Those problems informed the Reagan administration's approach to the Soviets; in order to mask the U.S.'s vulnerability to a first strike, Reagan sought to add to America's nuclear arsenal (feeling that "the best way to reduce the threat to the U.S. would be to increase the threat to the Soviet Union"). The practical implications of this dysfunction manifested during Able Archer 83, "an annual dry run" of the transfer of NATO's nuclear warheads from American control to European custodians, when a change in communication methods and patterns gave the Soviets the mistaken impression that the exercise might be a cover for an American first strike on the Soviet Union, which readied troops and nuclear weaponry to respond. While disaster was averted, Ambinder illuminates the fragility of existing safeguards against an unintentional launch, a timely topic given concerns about Iran and North Korea. He also walks the reader through the Reagan administration's and the Soviet government's respective internal debates about diplomatic and military strategy. This is a masterpiece of recent history.
