The Soviet reaction (first detected by the British during the exercise) alarmed the Americans, who struggled to make sense of what they saw as an irrational Soviet overreaction to a war game. Once the burst of traffic between the U.S. and Europe died down, the Soviets backed away from their retaliatory preparations. But Reagan, especially, took away a lesson from 1983 and from ABLE ARCHER in particular: it was time to reach out to the Kremlin, whose masters were far more fearful and insecure than anyone until that moment had realized.

Every one of these crises could have resulted in a global conflagration. Earlier crises (such as the Berlin Blockade of 1948 or the Korean attack of 1950) could have led to war, but they took place before the superpowers developed huge stockpiles of nuclear-armed intercontinental missiles. Each crisis was eventually resolved in favor of peace, but in every case both sides relied on gambles, and survived as much by luck as by strategy.

At some point, luck runs out. We can only hope, over 30 years after the last Cold War crisis, that Vladimir Putin and his subordinates in the Kremlin are done gambling with international peace.

Tom Nichols is Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College and an adjunct at the Harvard Extension School. His most recent book is No Use: Nuclear Weapons and U.S. National Security (University of Pennsylvania, 2014) The views expressed are his own. You can follow him on Twitter: @TheWarRoom_Tom.

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