The Brink

The incredible story of the 1983 war game that triggered a tense, brittle period of nuclear brinkmanship between the United States and the former Soviet Union.

What happened in 1983 to make the Soviet Union so afraid of a potential nuclear strike from the United States that they sent mobile ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) into the field, placing them on a three-minute alert?

Marc Ambinder explains the anxious period between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1982 to 1984, with the “Able Archer ’83” war game as the fulcrum of the tension. With astonishing and clarifying new details, he recounts the scary series of the close encounters that tested the limits of ordinary humans and powerful leaders alike. Ambinder explains how political leadership ultimately triumphed over misunderstandings, helping the two countries maintain a fragile peace.

Ambinder provides a comprehensive and chilling account of the nuclear command and control process, from intelligence warnings to the composition of the nuclear codes themselves. And he affords glimpses into the secret world of a preemptive electronic attack that scared the Soviet Union into action. Ambinder’s account reads like a thriller, recounting the spy-versus-spy games that kept both countries—and the world—in check.

From geopolitics in Moscow and Washington to sweat-caked soldiers fighting in the trenches of the Cold War, to high-stakes war games across NATO and the Warsaw Pact, The Brink serves as the definitive intelligence, nuclear, and national security history of one of the most precarious times in recent memory.

This book is an excellent telling of the end of the cold war and one of the near nuclear conflicts that occurred.  Having grown up in the 1980s, much of this book filled in the truth of the time that I was not aware.  The fear of the Soviet Union I understood well.  The Soviet fear of the United States surprised me.  I had never thought of my country as a threat to another.

The author does a great job of outlining the problems of Mutually Assured Destruction diplomacy.  He explains the efforts that President Reagan had to goto to engage the Soviets directly.  The complete lack of trust that the State Department had for the Soviets and the President surprised me.  I never realized the difficulty of implementing a new approach by a president.  The bureaucracy does run the town.