IT seems that the world is no safer place since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc states in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
With the collapse of communism in Russia, soon after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the West sensed a new dawn in world peace. The Cold War was over. Events like those in 1983 when a Soviet jet fighter shot down a South Korean passenger jumbo jet, killing all 269 on board could never happen again. Terrorism, was the new bogey.
The US and Russia jointly manned an orbiting space station; Hollywood included Russian special forces and intelligence officers among the good guys in action movies, and, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks Russia joined the West in a campaign against Islamic extremism.
Then came Malaysian Flight MH17, and suddenly our new good guys were backing terrorists.
Three decades ago, the South Korean Airlines jumbo was ironically registered as flight 007. The New York to Seoul Boeing 747 accidentally strayed into restricted Soviet airspace in September and copped an air-to air missile.
Amid Cold War tensions back then, the US accused the Soviets of obstructing search and rescue attempts at the crash site, and hiding the doomed plane's black box flight recorder. Sound familiar?
Thirty years ago it would have been easy to say the South Korean Airlines tragedy was a terrible mistake. No such luck today. There are plenty of free mobile phone apps capable of identifying the airline, type of aircraft, altitude, speed, heading, location and flight path. The murderers who fired the missile at flight MH17 knew what they were aiming at.
The Kremlin in 1983 was headed by a hard line leader Yuri Andropov, leading a communist super power, brimming with nuclear weapons, and doggedly trying to match US president Ronald Reagan's colossal rearmament plan. In the Kremlin in 2014, another tough guy, former KGB officer Vladimir Putin, clearly yearns for the old days and is certainly capable of triggering a new Cold War. He should abandon such thuggery and start by helping to find who murdered those innocent passengers. It's what statesmen do.