The U.S. and Rus­sia blun­dered to the brink of nuclear war in 1983 accord­ing to recent­ly declas­si­fied doc­u­ments, a reminder that as frayed as rela­tions between Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin have become, things could be far worse.

The NATO exer­cise that threat­ened mutu­al­ly assured destruc­tion began with a fic­tion­al sce­nario that today does­n’t seem all that fic­tion­al — Rus­sia deliv­ers arms to Syr­ia and Iran.

Lead­ers of sev­er­al Gulf States, threat­ened by Russ­ian inter­ven­tion, seek U.S. mil­i­tary involve­ment, accord­ing to the sce­nario.  The Pres­i­dent responds by dis­patch­ing mil­i­tary advis­ers to the region and increas­ing our naval pres­ence there.

As the NATO war game played out, ris­ing ten­sions even­tu­al­ly pro­voke Russ­ian mil­i­tary aggres­sion against its neigh­bors.  The U.S. Pres­i­dent, in response to a request from his mil­i­tary com­man­ders, autho­rizes the “lim­it­ed use of nuclear weapons against pre-select­ed fixed targets.”

Russ­ian mil­i­tary lead­ers who observed the NATO exer­cise con­clud­ed that the U.S. was plot­ting a real nuclear strike against the Sovi­et Union.  Amer­i­can intel­li­gence offi­cials had no idea at the time how bad­ly the Sovi­ets were mis­read­ing our inten­tions or how close the world was draw­ing toward nuclear con­fla­gra­tion.  War was avert­ed.  But just bare­ly, if the new­ly declas­si­fied intel­li­gence assess­ments are to be believed.

Today, Rus­sia is doing far more than mere­ly sup­ply­ing arms to Syr­ia and Iran, leav­ing Pres­i­dent Oba­ma frus­trat­ed and flum­moxed, but not fum­bling for the nuclear launch codes.  Instead, the Pres­i­dent watch­es help­less­ly as Vladimir Putin asserts him­self in a region where the U.S. once held sway, vague­ly warn­ing that Russ­ian inter­ven­tion is “not a smart, strate­gic move.”

He may be right. Con­tin­ue read­ing →