February 1980: Soviet Intelligence Chief ‘Dejected’ by Likelihood of Nuclear War with US

Markus Wolf, the chief of East Germany’s Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung (HVA) intelligence agency, has a sober conversation with Yuri Andropov, the head of the Soviet Union’s KGB intelligence agency. In his autobiography, Wolf will later recall: “We began discussing the East-West conflict. I had never before seen Andropov so somber and dejected. He described a gloomy scenario in which a nuclear war might be a real threat. His sober analysis came to the conclusion that the US government was striving with all means available to establish nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union. He cited statements of President Carter, his adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, and of Pentagon spokesmen, all of which included the assertion that under certain circumstances a nuclear first-strike against the Soviet Union and its allies would be justified.… Carter’s presidency had created great concern in the Kremlin, because he had presented a defense budget of more than $157 billion, which he invested in the MX and Trident missiles (see June 1979) and nuclear submarines (see Late 1979-1980). One of the top Soviet nuclear strategists confided to me that the resources of our alliance were not sufficient to match this.” [Fischer, 3/19/2007]