[Vince Ferrer]

Actually from what i have seen, they were somewhat irrational and paranoid around that time, , with Yuri Andropov bluntly announcing that the United States was preparing a secret nuclear attack on the USSR, and looking for anything that would confirm it.

It was incorrect, but they were basing their beliefs on our actions. Yes, they did believe that we might launch a preemptive attack, but isn't that exactly what our own and western European media and "intelligentsia" was saying as well? That Reagan was a cowboy?

[daniel1212]

Mutual misinterpretations, and the Archer op was unwise. See above (28).

But the Soviets had more of a history that warranted the lesser trust and fostered Regan’s warnings, and i doubt that if the Soviets were not opposed by us then they would have gone about conquering the world.