| Summary/Abstract |
Many western historians believe that in November 1983 the world went to the brink of nuclear war. Paranoid Soviet leaders, it is argued, feared that an annual NATO exercise to rehearse nuclear release procedures, Able Archer 83, was being used to disguise preparations for an American nuclear first-strike. As a consequence, Soviet nuclear forces prepared to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack that would have precipitated Armageddon. In their very different books, Nate Jones and Taylor Downing explore the contexts and risks of what Robert Gates has called, ‘one of the potentially most dangerous episodes of the Cold War’.
|