U.S.-Russia Military Tit For Tat Raises Fears Of Greater Conflict
By Jeremy Diamond and Greg Botelho, CNN
Updated 3:07 PM ET, Wed June 17, 2015
Washington (CNN)The war of words between America and Russia is escalating. So, too, is the movement of implements of war -- from U.S. fighter jets to Russian nuclear weapons.
So is an actual war imminent?
No one in Russia, NATO or the United States has gone that far yet. Still, the rhetoric and actions from both sides have definitely ratcheted up in recent days, raising concerns of a new arms race -- if not worse -- amid tensions both sides blame on each other.
The major players all claim their movements are defensive and necessary responses to their foe's provocation. None has talked of an invasion.
Still, that's not what some experts are worried about. They say a bigger fear is what things can happen, accidentally, when you have increasingly powerful military forces lined up so close to each other.
Part of it has to do with the unpredictable nature of other actors, like Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine who may broaden their own conflicts by inadvertently or purposefully striking others. The biggest such example may be the 2014 shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines commercial plane over Ukraine by rebels.
more...
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/17/politics/russia-us-military-threats-rise-ukraine/
jakeXT
(10,575 posts)DURING 10 DAYS in November 1983, the United States and the Soviet Union nearly started a nuclear war. Newly declassified documents from the CIA, NSA, KGB, and senior officials in both countries reveal just how close we came to mutually assured destruction over a military exercise.
That exercise, Able Archer 83, simulated the transition by NATO from a conventional war to a nuclear war, culminating in the simulated release of warheads against the Soviet Union. NATO changed its readiness condition during Able Archer to DEFCON 1, the highest level. The Soviets interpreted the simulation as a ruse to conceal a first strike and readied their nukes. At this period in history, and especially during the exercise, a single false alarm or miscalculation could have brought Armageddon.
According to a diplomatic memo obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by National Security Archives researcher Nate Jones, Soviet General Secretary Yuri Adroprov warned U.S. ambassador Averell Harriman six months before the crisis that both countries may be moving toward a red line in which a miscalculation could spark a nuclear war. Harriman later wrote that he believed Andropov was concerned over the state of U.S.-Soviet relations and his desire to see them at least normalized, if not improved.
The early 1980s was a crisis period, a pre-wartime period, said Gen. Varfolomei Korobushin, the former deputy chief of staff of the Soviet nuclear Strategic Rocket Forces, according to an interview conducted by the Pentagon in the early 1990s and obtained by Jones. The Kremlins Central Committee slept in shifts. There were fears the deployment of Pershing II ballistic missiles to Europe (also in November 1983) could tip the balance. If a conventional war erupted, Soviet planners worried their troops would come close to capturing the nuclear-tipped missiles, prompting the United States to fire them.
http://www.wired.com/2013/05/able-archer-scare/
cprise
(8,445 posts)Suggested viewing:
https://archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares-Episode1BabyItsColdOutside
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Yeah, they got some local yahoos helping out, but strategically and logistically this has been Moscow's show from the start...