Modern Mentoring

4

Trust in the Social Era

In 1983, I was a young petty officer in the U.S. Navy stationed off the shores of Scotland. The early 1980s represented the late part of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and its allies, and the West. During this time, the enmity between the United States and the Soviet Union had reached a head. While not highly publicized, both nations lived under the threat of a nuclear attack, which could ultimately lead to total nuclear annihilation for both parties. With weapons drawn, each nation waited painstakingly for the other side to blink, to step across the line, to send us spiraling into a catastrophe like no one had ever known.

Israeli historian Dmitry Adamsky accurately refers to the 1983 war games as “the moment ...