Several times during the cold war, miscommunication almost led to nuclear conflict. Now, amid tensions over Ukraine, Russia and the West are showing a new failure to communicate.
Washington; and Moscow — Knowing your enemy doesn't just win the war. Sometimes, it also can be critical to keeping the peace.
Such was the case in 1983, during a massive NATO drill to test the alliance's capabilities to respond to a Soviet invasion of western Europe. Unknown to its planners, however, "Able Archer," which envisaged using nuclear weapons to halt the enemy advance, looked to Soviet eyes exactly the way Soviet intelligence had predicted a US nuclear "first strike" would unfold.
Though many of the details of how war was averted remain undisclosed, experts on both sides say the world came to the very brink of nuclear Armageddon through a chain of preventable misunderstandings. It was one of several cold war close calls that convinced Moscow and Washington to step up military contacts and establish formal, as well as informal, channels of communication that might make all the difference in an emergency.
WNU Editor: In the past few months I have been saying the same thing .... the old back-channels, relationships, and lines of communications that were built up during the Cold War are no longer being used between Moscow and the West. This is (in my opinion) an incredibly dangerous development that an now only be resolved at the Presidential level. Unfortunately .... Putin has been shut out from the West, and President Obama has shown no interest in showing any accommodation to Moscow. Hence ... no one is talking to each other .... and the military drills (and threats) continue.
Update: This is so true .... Future Is Bleak for U.S.-Russian Relationship (Kevin Ryan, Moscow Times).