Donald Rumsfeld as Reagan's VP

https://books.google.com/books?id=J...&q=Reagan "able archer" "scaled back"&f=false

Reagan also deserves credit for slightly reducing the size of the poker raise in the Able Archer military exercise which was performed Nov. 2-11, '83. This exercise was performed pretty much every year, but in 1983 they were also going to involve heads of states in the command sequence.

This source talks about the role of National Security Advisor Bob McFarlane. But I've read elsewhere that when McFarlane went to President Reagan with his concerns, Reagan easily and comfortably made an executive decision, okay, we're not going to do that part, referring to his own role in the exercise.
 
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Agree, but he was somewhat of a hands off/delegator type of President and Rummy might have been able to convince him to start a major war. OTL Reagan didn't do anything larger than Grenada.

There's some disconnect here, in that you acknowledge Reagan never tried to do anything larger then Grenada (As well as pulled out of Lebanon, sought Arms control agreements with the Soviets, etc) but somehow he could be talked into starting WWIII.
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...45f-95a0-25558413cb12/?utm_term=.2352358b6db0

' . . . makes clear that I was given only selective information -- some of the pilots' words and none of the comments of the ground controllers. Those full conversations reveal that the Russians believed the intruder aircraft was an American RC-135 reconnaissance plane, . . . '
This pertains to the Korean Airliner which the Soviets shot down on Aug. 31, 1983 Washington time.

Please don't think I'm justifying this. What I am saying is that it's a lot more muddled than the propaganda we used it for.
 
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