The year 1983 was a tense one in U.S.-Soviet relations, perhaps the most frightening since the Cuban missile crisis two decades earlier. In the 1970s the Soviet Union had begun deploying mobile SS-20 intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) that gave it the capability of obliterating a great deal of Western Europe. In response, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization began stationing mobile Pershing II IRBMs in West Germany in late 1983 along with ground-launched cruise missiles capable of hitting military targets in Soviet home territory. President Ronald Reagan's “evil empire” speech of 8 March 1983, combined with his announcement two weeks later of a program to develop and deploy a space-based Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), stimulated war rhetoric within the Soviet military. The situation worsened further on 1 September 1983 when the Soviet air force shot down a South Korean passenger airliner.
The administration of Yurii Andropov had been talking privately...