“In 1983, we may have inadvertently placed our relations with the Soviet Union on a hair trigger,” the review concluded.
That autumn has long been regarded as one of the most tense moments of the Cold War, coming after the Soviet Union shot down a South Korean civilian airliner in September and as the West was preparing to deploy Pershing II intermediate-range and ground-launched cruise missiles in Europe in November. But there has been a long-running debate about whether the period known as the “war scare” was a moment of genuine danger or a period of bluster for propaganda purposes.”
There are a number of interesting points in this article concerning perceptions and miss-perceptions.
1. Balance of power politics, even in a “relatively simple” two power system are complex and ambiguous, especially when tensions are high.
2. One side never really knows what the other side is thinking or how it sees a situation. While the US was arguing that the USSR was one offensive, the Soviets were concerned that a “deterioration of Soviet power might tempt a US first strike,”.
3. One’s adversaries probably do not see them in the same way they see themselves: Ronald Reagan was surprised that the USSR feared an American attack. Not because of the balance of power, but because “he felt that “it must be clear to anyone” that Americans were a moral people who, since the founding of the nation, “had always used our power only as a force for good in the world.”
IR Theory & Practice 