Category Archives: History

NATO Exercise Able Archer Spooks Soviets

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Researching to write a book about the justification for the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapon Plant in Colorado has led me to many fascinating historical facts. A CIA report describes how the Soviets had implemented an intelligence collection system with the acronym name RYAN in 1981 to watch for US preparations for launching a surprise nuclear attack. NATO began a command post exercise codenamed Able Archer in 1983 that triggered significant concern in the Soviet Union. They were familiar with the exercise from previous years and noted with concern that high-level US officials usually not involved would participate. There would even be an appearance by President Reagan. Perhaps even more concerning was that there would be “…a practice drill that took NATO forces through a full-scale simulated release of nuclear weapons.”

Oleg Gordievsky was a KGB Colonel stationed in London and a double agent for British intelligence. He reported to the British that “…the KGB Center sent a flash cable to West European residencies advising them, incorrectly, that US forces in Europe had gone on alert and that troops at some bases were being mobilized.” There was speculation this (nonexistent) alert was a response to the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Lebanon, related to US Army maneuvers, “…or was the beginning of a countdown to a surprise nuclear attack.”

Gordievsky described the reaction in stark terms: “In the tense atmosphere generated by the crises and rhetoric of the past few months, the KGB concluded that American forces had been placed on alert–and might even have begun the countdown to war…. The world did not quite reach the edge of the nuclear abyss during Operation RYAN. But during ABLE ARCHER 83 it had, without realizing it, come frighteningly close–certainly closer than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.” [emphasis added]

The Able Archer story has been studied extensively by the US and Britain and journalists. A consistent conclusion is that the US. And Soviet Union came close to war as a result of the Soviet overreaction, and “…only Gordievsky’s timely warning to the West kept things from getting out of hand…” Gordievsky’s information was also “…an epiphany for President Reagan, convincing him that the Kremlin was fearful of a US surprise nuclear attack…”

Reading the reports about Able Archer and the reactions reminds me that the world was a dangerous place when the decision was made to build Rocky Flats. It continued to be a dangerous place until the Soviet Union dissolved.

Maximalist: America in the World from Truman to Obama

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maximalistAn early quibble about the book is that it did not lead off (at least that I found) with a definition of Maximalist. From reading the book I’m guessing it means taking an extreme foreign policy position. The problem with that simplistic definition is that Truman took an extreme position in several foreign policy matters, to include the “Truman Doctrine” that kept Turkey and Greece out of the clutches of the Soviets and the Marshall Plan that rescued Europe. Reagan also took extreme positions in standing up to the Soviets, or, in Reagan’s words, “the Evil Empire.” Those “extreme positions” presented America as an aggressive world power.  Obama could also be called a “Maximalist” by my simplistic definition. He took extreme positions that resulted, in my opinion, in sending a message that he is disinterested in the U.S. being a world power.

Despite my quibble, the book does describe the major foreign policy positions of the Presidents from Truman to Obama. Truman had given up on cooperation with the Soviets by 1947. He went before Congress to ask for emergency economic and military support to Turkey and Greece to countermand the “Iron Curtain,” as originally named by Churchill. Marshall expanded Truman’s policy of countering the Soviets while helping desperate people in Europe when he announced what would be known as the “Marshall Plan” at a Harvard commencement in June 1947. Marshall attended meetings with the Soviets fearing that the U.S. language had been too strident. He returned convinced that the criticism of the Soviets had been accurate and appropriate. He said in a nationwide radio address that the Soviets were “…clearly adapted to absolute control. They could only lead to dictatorship and strife.” The message from all sides of U.S. foreign policy became the rallying cry originated by Robert Murphy, senior diplomat to Germany, “The United States must run this show.”  Stalin made a huge strategic blunder by ordering all Eastern European diplomats to pull out of the “Marshall Plan” talks. That decision allowed the plan to focus on the countries the U.S. really wanted to support and significantly reduced the costs.

The U.S. policy of “containment” of the Soviets caused them to be more aggressive. They brought down the democratic government of Czechoslovakia in a Communist coup in February 1948 and began the Berlin blockade. One prominent dissenter of the containment policy was George Kennan, who had warned of Soviet intentions in his “Long Telegram” to the U.S. State Department. Kennan had changed his mind and wrote an allegedly anonymous article under the pseudonym “X.”  That article advocated that, “The State Department’s best-informed and most brilliant Soviet expert believed there was no real Soviet military threat to speak of. There was, in turn, no need to do anything about it.” Continue reading →

Islam’s Golden Age of Science

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House of WisdomJonathan Lyons’ book House of Wisdom is about the most splendid period for science in Islamic – and particularly the Arab Islamic – history. This corresponded with Europe’s Dark Ages when a “great struggle between faith and reason was about to come crashing down on an unsuspecting Europe.”

The arrival of Arab science and philosophy “transmuted the backward West into a scientific and technological superpower.”

Too many Westerners think of Arabs as mere guardians of ancient Greek scholarship, holding it safely until it could be recovered by its rightful European heirs. Lyons wants you to see that Muslims made vast additions to this ancient base, and that the religion of Islam was a driver for many of their efforts.

Lyons feels the “Western consensus… that Islam is inherently hostile to innovation” is a “persistent notion” that is wrong. Because of this, Lyons tells the story from the viewpoint of Arabs – invaded by brutal, ignorant, and unsanitary barbarians (they tended to call all Europeans “Franks”) as the Crusades began.

Anyone clinging to a romantic of the Middle Ages will be disgusted by accounts of the People’s Crusade, fueled as much by political machinations as religious furor. A rabble swept towards the Middle East, killing and sacking through Christian Europe as they went, only to be slaughtered by Muslim troops. A few years later, a Crusade of troops had better luck in war.

The first couple chapters cover this period and amply document its horrors, but I was more interested in Muslim science.

“Early Islam openly encouraged and nurtured intellectual inquiry of all kinds,” which was encouraged by many sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad.

Caliph al-Mamun was anxious to collect knowledge from Hindu, Persian, and Greek scholars, and initiated the House of Wisdom, “the collective institutional and imperial expression of… intellectual ambition.” But they didn’t simply translate and copy the works of others.

Here’s what I found most interesting – how the religion of Islam encouraged science. Continue reading →

The Oak Ridge Story

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Oak Ridge Story book coverThis book was referenced in an article provided by a friend, and it contains some extraordinarily interesting aspects for a book published in 1950. For example, the Introduction describes how the Japanese, when they were in control of Southern Luzon in the Philippines, conducted a roundup of “…persons suspected of unfriendly attitudes.” An elderly American who had lived in the Philippines for many years was questioned about his nationality. “The man replied he was from Tennessee. A perplexed look crossed the (Japanese) officer’s face. Then he decreed. ‘You may depart. You are of a non-belligerent nation. Japan has no war with Tennessee’.” The irony is that activities in Tennessee would lead to the first atomic bomb used in warfare that was detonated over Hiroshima in 1945.

The book describes how John Hendrix was a devoutly religious person who lived in Eastern Tennessee at the turn of the Twentieth Century and described visions that caused people to laugh. He described a railroad that had yet to be built but was eventually built. However, that isn’t the most remarkable vision described by the “Prophet.” He described visions he had during a forty day self-imposed isolation in the woods. He emerged from his isolation to tell neighbors the valley, “…some day will be filled with great buildings and factories and they will help toward winning the greatest war that ever will be…Big engines will dig big ditches and thousands of people will be running to and fro. They will be building things and there will be great noise and confusion and the earth will shake…I’ve seen it. It’s coming.”

Many of the neighbors of Hendrix undoubtedly considered him to be hopelessly delusional, or perhaps they just passed him off as an interesting eccentric. There is no doubt his visions, perhaps by sheer luck or by actual prophesy, accurately predicted the building of massive Manhattan Project installations in Eastern Tennessee. I find the prediction that, “…the earth will shake” to be the most compelling. The detonation of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 indeed caused the earth to shake along with other effects that killed or injured tens of thousands of people in that Japanese city. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did indeed, as prophesized by Mr. Hendrix, “…help toward winning the greatest war that ever will be…” Continue reading →

Hiroshima

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Hiroshima book coverI’ve been told this book by John Hershey is the most famous of the many books describing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. My first reaction was to be astonished that it was so small. I won’t be so foolish to dismiss the importance of a book that has over 400 Amazon reviews with an average of more than 4 out of five “stars,” but I expected more. Perhaps I’ve read too many books that describe the horrific effects of a nuclear weapon detonation over a city. My purpose for finally reading it was to look for new information for the book I’m writing that has the working title of “Nuclear Deterrence: An Early History of The Rocky Flats Plant.” That history obviously includes the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Any history of the impact of nuclear weapons on deterrence would obviously be deficient without a discussion of the first use of nuclear weapons in war.

The book describes the situations of six residents of Hiroshima when the nuclear bomb was detonated over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The six are described as a clerk who was chatting with a coworker, a physician who had sat down to read a newspaper, a tailor’s widow who was watching a neighbor, a German priest who was reading a magazine, a surgeon who was carrying a blood sample to a laboratory, and a Methodist pastor who was unloading a cart of clothes. The first observation is that they all had, for one reason or another, turned their heads away from the location of the detonation or were a few feet beyond a window that faced the detonation. Those small accidents of history saved all of them from having their eyes destroyed. There is a description of how a contingent of Japanese soldiers was outside and all had looked up to see the single B-29 when the detonation occurred. All of them had their “eyes melted.” Continue reading →

Packing for Space – Oh, and Mars, too

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packing for marsMary Roach’s book Packing for Mars is not mostly about Mars. This annoys me. It opens hopefully with isolation studies aimed at all space travel, but in particular a mission to Mars; and the last chapter is aimed at Mars. But the subtitle is more accurate: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. The Void is zero-gravity.

Not everyone is annoyed like me. The book gets 4.5 stars on Amazon.

Roach presents the history of the US and Russia in space, from captured Nazi rockets to the International Space Station. She uses her signature method of digging into the gnarly nitty-gritty. “One of the things I love about manned space exploration is that it forces people to unlace certain notions of what is and isn’t acceptable. And possible.” This suits her style.

Zero-g and the human body
Zero-g presents a lot of problems for the human body. Roach is characteristically persistent in her exploration of how bodily effluvia are handled. Some of it is fascinating. Water, and therefore urine, acts very differently in zero-g where surface tension controls its movements. Urine builds up on the sides of the bladder, which fails to warn an astronaut it’s time to pee. The bladder can get so full it squeezes off the urethra and a catheterization is needed to avoid death. Imagine the obituary.

Poop is even ickier.

Space hygiene is an interesting contrast to all the gleaming white rockets and high tech equipment NASA likes to display.

Sex – shush
Sex in space is also explored and, since NASA won’t discuss the subject, Roach turns to marine biologists to learn about underwater mammals. She also includes stories of acknowledged hoaxes and pornography about sex in zero-g. That’s’ funny – for a while.

Sex is one thing and reproduction is another. Space-station research on rats suggests embryos may not be able to implant in zero-g.

What about Mars?
But I wanted to learn about a Mars mission. My ebook edition makes it easy to find all the mentions of Mars – seventy two times, in three clusters of references, within two hundred twenty pages of text. I’d become frustrated and started skimming in chapter four – Really? V-2 rockets and the first (unfortunate) monkeys in space? So counting made me feel better about the book.  Continue reading →