If Reagan respectfully asks to attend Brezhnev's funeral Nov. 82, less dangerous '83?

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev went on to the great beyond on Nov. 10, 1982.

And please remember, Ronald Reagan had written a letter to Brezhnev in late Spring 1981 and in some ways thought of himself as put on the Earth by God to prevent nuclear war.

Even if the Soviets had said, no thank you, we don't want the attention taken away from the funeral, would the mere asking, perhaps privately through diplomatic channels, had made for a less dangerous '83?

And I'm thinking of all the tension around 'Able Archer' and 'Reforger.'
 
No change. Yuri Andropov would've still been hyper paranoid in 1983.

Worst Problem is not Adropov's paranoia, it's Adropov's illness. Certainly he was a KGB man with all the vices of the proffession, but the fact he was geting dialisys helped a lot to boost the paranoia in his entourage about the possibility of the west profiting what could be understood as a weak leadership in the SU.
 

CalBear

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I am struggling to picture a POTUS asking if he could please attend the funeral of a dictator that led a country with around 30K nuclear weapons cocked and locked on the U.S.


Be one way to stop Reagan from being reelected.
 
I am struggling to picture a POTUS asking if he could please attend the funeral of a dictator that led a country with around 30K nuclear weapons cocked and locked on the U.S.


Be one way to stop Reagan from being reelected.

Not if he's still facing Walter Mondale.
 
1983 was probably going to be a difficult year regardless.

1) As I recall, it was the American hardliners such as Weinberger and Casey that didnt want Reagan to go to Moscow for the funeral.

2) The hardliners were fairly adamant about not negotiating with the Russians at this point. There was a perception that detente had given the Soviets a free hand to advance their interests in Africa and Latin America. Until Reagan decided to pivot by turning to Schultz rather than the hardliners, there wasnt much interest in reducing tensions.

3) The issue with the Pershings was going to keep tensions high. Washington wanted the Soviets and Americans to both withdraw the weapons while the Soviets wanted to include the French and British weapons in the negotiations. Given the weapons werent deployed until Nov/Dec 83, it seems likely that tense relations were likely to continue.

4) Star Wars was still going to be rolled out and that was going to infuriate the Soviets. The announcement was done so clumsily that in retrospect it takes the appearance of a bluff. Schultz was appalled by the announcement fearing that it would undermine NATO. And he was given no notice of the announcement. Point being, Star Wars was going to be an agenda item regardless and the Soviets would hate it.

5) KAL007 is a tough one to look past particularly given the Soviet diplomatic and media responses. They really screwed up their response after the downing became public.
 
1983 was probably going to be a difficult year regardless.
5) KAL007 is a tough one to look past particularly given the Soviet diplomatic and media responses. They really screwed up their response after the downing became public.

Ten days before KAL 007, an arctic storm wrecked all of the long range radars in the Soviet Far East. The Soviet Air Defense Forces were supposed to be able to repair and restore to full working order those radars within 48 hours. They couldn't because all of the critical spare parts had been stolen and sold on the black market.:eek: Two days later, the Politburo asked the commander of the Soviet ADF Far East forces whether the radars had been made operational yet. He lied, and said yes.

Eight days after that, KAL 007, thanks to (apparently) a badly programmed navigational computer, strayed over Soviet airspace on the Kamchatka Peninsula. While local tactical SAM radars could pick up the 747's general vicinity, they couldn't target an aircraft moving at that speed and altitude that wasn't heading for any specific Soviet targets.

Soviet fighters looked for the 747, but since they had restricted fuel capacity (to prevent them from flying to Japan) and very restricted radio frequency sets (to prevent them from talking to any non-Soviet source), they had a very hard time trying to find them without the long range radars that were supposed to direct them in.

Only as KAL 007 was leaving Soviet airspace did the Soviets determine that the aircraft had no Soviet IFF transponder. Which meant, to the Soviets, "if you ain't us, you da' enemy". The rest was infamy.

That the Soviets, after hashing out the truth for themselves, would have doubled down on their own lies is no surprise. Most of the Soviet Politburo members would be dropping like flies within the next two years anyway, including the Soviet Minister of Defense Ustinov who gave that press conference worthy of the Ministry of Love.:mad:


Soviet claims of an American recon aircraft being the "real plane" was patently false, as the Soviets never actually knew the USAF aircraft was in the area (it was outside of their remaining working radars), and the plane in question had been down on the ground for over an hour by the time KAL 007 was shot down.

Michael Moriarty starred in a film playing an actual USAF Intelligence major who went to his general to tell him that in his professional opinion the Soviets had good reason to suspect that KAL 007 was the same USAF recon aircraft, and the general went to a Presidential intelligence briefing with that information. The general, and later the major, got crucified. The film ended leaving the viewer thinking that it was all "just a misunderstanding".

After the Wall came down, the records revealed that the film-makers were WRONG and the Reagan Administration was RIGHT.:p
 
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Ten days before KAL 007, an arctic storm wrecked all of the long range radars in the Soviet Far East. The Soviet Air Defense Forces were supposed to be able to repair and restore to full working order those radars within 48 hours. They couldn't because all of the critical spare parts had been stolen and sold on the black market.:eek: Two days later, the Politburo asked the commander of the Soviet ADF Far East forces whether the radars had been made operational yet. He lied, and said yes.

Eight days after that, KAL 007, thanks to (apparently) a badly programmed navigational computer, strayed over Soviet airspace on the Kamchatka Peninsula. While local tactical SAM radars could pick up the 747's general vicinity, they couldn't target an aircraft moving at that speed and altitude that wasn't heading for any specific Soviet targets.

Soviet fighters looked for the 747, but since they had restricted fuel capacity (to prevent them from flying to Japan) and very restricted radio frequency sets (to prevent them from talking to any non-Soviet source), they had a very hard time trying to find them without the long range radars that were supposed to direct them in.

Only as KAL 007 was leaving Soviet airspace did the Soviets determine that the aircraft had no Soviet IFF transponder. Which meant, to the Soviets, "if you ain't us, you da' enemy". The rest was infamy.

That the Soviets, after hashing out the truth for themselves, would have doubled down on their own lies is no surprise. Most of the Soviet Politburo members would be dropping like flies within the next two years anyway, including the Soviet Minister of Defense Ustinov who gave that press conference worthy of the Ministry of Love.:mad:


Soviet claims of an American recon aircraft being the "real plane" was patently false, as the Soviets never actually knew the USAF aircraft was in the area (it was outside of their remaining working radars), and the plane in question had been down on the ground for over an hour by the time KAL 007 was shot down.

Michael Moriarty starred in a film playing an actual USAF Intelligence major who went to his general to tell him that in his professional opinion the Soviets had good reason to suspect that KAL 007 was the same USAF recon aircraft, and the general went to a Presidential intelligence briefing with that information. The general, and later the major, got crucified. The film ended leaving the viewer thinking that it was all "just a misunderstanding".

After the Wall came down, the records revealed that the film-makers were WRONG and the Reagan Administration was RIGHT.:p

The US military had no 747's. It is a very distinctive shape and the pilot that shot it down had visual contact with the plane. It was not mis identification.
 
I think they meant the combination of Andropov's kidney problems messing with his head and the Reagan administration's confrontational foreign policy when the USSR was used to Nixonian detente was bad overall.
 
How exactly did we make Andropov paranoid?
Primarily, Able Archer. And we on the U.S. side were slow on the uptake. The Soviets had an actual fear we would use a military exercise as cover for the real thing. We still needed military exercises of course, but we could have been smarter about not feeding into this psychology quite so much. To our credit we did phase way back the inclusion of political leaders in the exercise. But we also introduced a new type of secret communication, which we may have viewed just as an improvement and a step forward, but to the Soviets it was just one more line of evidence. In addition:

introduction of a new generation of intermediate range nuclear missiles to West Germany,

Reagan's 'evil empire' speech,

Before one of his radio broadcasts, Reagan making a joke that Congress had outlawed Russia and bombing starts in five minutes
 
And I did not know about this part:

History Staff :Center for the Study of Intelligence
Central Intelligence Agency
1997

A Cold War Conundrum: The 1983 Soviet War Scare


http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/film/ciawar.htm

' . . . New information suggests that Moscow also was reacting to US-led naval and air operations, including psychological warfare missions conducted close to the Soviet Union. These operations employed sophisticated concealment and deception measures to thwart Soviet early warning systems and to offset the Soviets' ability--greatly bolstered by US spy John Walker--to read US naval communications. . . '

' . . . RYAN may have been a response to the first in a series of US psychological warfare operations (PSYOPs in military jargon) initiated in the early months of the Reagan administration. 21 These operations consisted mainly of air and naval probes near Soviet borders. The activity was virtually invisible except to a small circle of White House and Pentagon officials--and, of course, to the Kremlin. . . '

' . . . The purpose of this program was not so much to signal US intentions to the Soviets as to keep them guessing what might come next. The program also probed for gaps and vulnerabilities in the USSR's early warning intelligence system: "Sometimes we would send bombers over the North Pole and their radars would click on," recalls Gen. Jack Chain, [a] former Strategic Air Command commander. "Other times fighter-bombers would probe their Asian or European periphery." During peak times, the operation would include several maneuvers in a week. They would come at irregular intervals to make the effect all the more unsettling. Then, as quickly as the unannounced flights began, they would stop, only to begin again a few weeks later. . . '
Testing and probing defenses was, and perhaps still is, part of modern defense. But this seems to be just messing with the Soviets.

Then they might mess with us in turn. And then we have a more brittle system.
 
I think they meant the combination of Andropov's kidney problems messing with his head and the Reagan administration's confrontational foreign policy when the USSR was used to Nixonian detente was bad overall.

Don't forget Ford's extension of that plus Carter's putting detente on turbo before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan put it all in the crapper. Why SHOULD the Politburo have been surprised? (1) Because as Reagan himself said, when it came to threatening language, the Sovs had him trumped in spades. Except for that stupid "outlawing Russia/bombing" joke. You'd think an actor who started in radio would know to always treat any microphone as being live.:p

1) Reagan may have been going senile in his second term, but based on the record many Politburo members, even Brezhnev himself, were clearly failing mentally as early as 1979.

Primarily, Able Archer. And we on the U.S. side were slow on the uptake. The Soviets had an actual fear we would use a military exercise as cover for the real thing. We still needed military exercises of course, but we could have been smarter about not feeding into this psychology quite so much. To our credit we did phase way back the inclusion of political leaders in the exercise. But we also introduced a new type of secret communication, which we may have viewed just as an improvement and a step forward, but to the Soviets it was just one more line of evidence.

Don't forget that Able Archer 83 was:

a) long scheduled, if somewhat up tempo'd

b) occurred AFTER KAL007, so the US was in no mood whatsoever to consider Soviet "sensitivities". If anything, it was the Soviets who should have pulled back their claws. But then if they took the more cautious approach then they wouldn't be the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.:rolleyes: The last time they chose caution was in Cuba during the Missile Crisis.

In addition:

introduction of a new generation of intermediate range nuclear missiles to West Germany,

In response to the Soviets' first introducing similar weapons (the SS-20 mobile launcher). Why does the USSR always get a pass while the USA is the imperialist warmonger?:(:p Though I'll admit that within a totalitarian regime its quite possible for some, even at the highest levels, to see improvements in the defense capabilities of their enemies as threatening provocations, while the Soviets' actions are only peaceful means in direct response to them. Even if the Soviets deploy the response before the threatening Western provocative weapons get off the drawing boards.:p

Reagan's 'evil empire' speech

As opposed to the "Evils of Capitalism" and "Inevitable Collapse of the West" speeches coming out of Radio Moscow and the mouths of Politburo members every day since 1917? Minus 1941-1945, of course.;)

Before one of his radio broadcasts, Reagan making a joke that Congress had outlawed Russia and bombing starts in five minutes

I'll give you that one hands down!:eek::eek::eek::rolleyes:

And I did not know about this part:

Testing and probing defenses was, and perhaps still is, part of modern defense. But this seems to be just messing with the Soviets.

Then they might mess with us in turn. And then we have a more brittle system.

Again, wasn't this post-KAL 007? I was around at the time, and I can tell you the world was PISSED. Not just because of the action, not just because of the Soviet's Orwellian public response to it, but the furious frustration not just in the West but in the Pacific and East Asian nations that there really wasn't a damn thing that we could have done about it short of WWIII:eek:

So if we wound up "puttin' the scare" in them for awhile, so much the better. And if the Soviets had been trigger happy enough to go to their own version of DEFCON 1 because they were merely nervous, then the world would be blown up anyway. At least the one advantage to be found in having a super-elderly enemy is that they really just want a soft life before they have to face a God they didn't believe in.:p
 
Again, wasn't this post-KAL 007? I was around at the time, and I can tell you the world was PISSED. Not just because of the action, not just because of the Soviet's Orwellian public response to it, but the furious frustration not just in the West but in the Pacific and East Asian nations that there really wasn't a damn thing that we could have done about it short of WWIII:eek:

This was pre KAL. I think it was the spring of 1983 where we did a massive naval exercise off the coast of Kamchatka testing their radar vulnarabilities and responses. We also did something off of Murmansk in 81 or 82 as I recall. We were seriously screwing with them.
 
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