Book Shelf 24-7 ~ Archiving ABLE ARCHER 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise That Almost Triggered Nuclear War edited by Nate Jones (The New Press, 2016)

I first encountered the Able Archer 83 story in the early-2000s when a coworker who was something of a Russophile talked to me about their personal research obsession. Although they always were working on their Able Archer story, it was Nate Jones of the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. who really brought the story to the public.

Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise That Almost Triggered Nuclear War is more an archive than it is a research document. Literally. The book is 338 pages long of which the first 65 is the research study, the next nine are photo plates, and another 235 pages are archival documents before another 35 pages of notes and index.

While Jones presents the story behind Able Archer 83, the availability of the documents in the archival section of the book enables the reader to draw their own conclusions based on the intelligence record presented. Given the record in the book is circa 2016, more recent scholarship can add additional insight. I strongly recommend reading sources that have come available since, such as “Comrade Kryuchkov’s “War Scare” (1983), or the Bureaucratic Origins of the “Able Archer” War-Scare Thesis” by Douglas Selvage in the May 2024 issue of International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence.

Recommended.

Readings

Jones, M. Editor (2016) Able Archer 83: The Secret History of the NATO Exercise That Almost Triggered Nuclear War. New York: The New Press.

Selvage, D. (2024). Comrade Kryuchkov’s “War Scare” (1983), or the Bureaucratic Origins of the “Able Archer” War-Scare Thesis. International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/08850607.2024.2334198

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Feature image courtesy RMN

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