According to Belovai's account, he decided to alert the United States to the security leak because he became convinced that the information gleaned by Operation Snowdrop could lead to a nuclear showdown. "At the beginning of the 1980s, the Soviet Military Intelligence had all the essential intelligence data on the US and Nato forces in Europe. The Red Army had the ability to launch a successful general attack against Nato forces in Europe. In case of war, Nato forces would have had two choices: capitulation or the deployment of nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union," he recalled.