American and NATO Propaganda in Regard to Russian Aerial Probing — Has Deadly Potential to Bite Us Later

16 December 2014

When we lack geopolitical objectivity, we tend to push adversaries into positions that escalate our own propensities for war

Propaganda worsens our penchant for being carelessly dumb about starting wars.

There are some situations where Military Industrial Complex profit-seeking — which accounts for most of the imperialism that we conduct on a daily basis —needs to be controlled — if the United States is going to economically survive over the long haul.

Our current confrontation with the Russian Federation over its expansionist tendencies in Ukraine and elsewhere is one of these subtly dangerous situations.

Western propaganda, worthy of Chairman Mao, never seems to stop

At present, its most blatant manifestation is in the form of hyperbolic alarm about Provocative Putin flying “his” planes in international air space, closely adjacent to NATO countries.

Here is yesterday’s representative tidbit:

A civilian plane, en route from Denmark to Poland, almost collided with a Russian spyplane minutes after departure, Swedish authorities said on Friday.

The Russian aircraft was flying with the transponder turned off.

The Swedish Air Force scrambled its JAS-39 Gripen jets to intercept and escort the “intruder,” which was identified as an intelligence-gathering type of aircraft (most probably an Il-20 Coot).

The Russian plane, however, was in international air space . . .

Which means that the Russian air crew was doing what the United States probably does every day — even, I imagine, while zipping along actually inside some other nation’s borders.

When the “Rooskies” act similarly — and even lawfully stay inside international air space — the act (according to the West) somehow becomes characteristic of an evil regime.

In this Swedish instance, who was the one being provocative?

By their own reported admission the Swedes attempted to “escort” a non-intruder that was flying in international airspace.

How one can intrude (in both the legal and semantic senses), without first plopping over into Swedish air space defeats me.

I also do not recall anyone ever having given Sweden authority to police international aviation safety.

Consequently, either the Swedes are exaggerating the strength of their “escort” action, or the Russians would have had colorable justification for shooting the interfering Swedish pilots down.

So, really, who was provoking whom?

Western hotheads cannot seem to help themselves

Take Marc Champion — representative of much of the American media yesterday and today — as he wrote in Bloomberg View:

Russia seems not to have learned the central lesson of the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine: That reckless strategies produce accidents, and the costs can be huge.

Sweden and Denmark hauled in their respective Russian ambassadors on Monday to complain that an airliner flying between the two Scandinavian countries on Friday had to change course to avoid collision with a Russian spy plane. The Russian aircraft had turned off its transponder to remain invisible to air traffic controllers. This incident followed a nearer miss in March, in precisely the same circumstances.

Russia’s response to Friday’s incident was to say that the two planes weren't dangerously close (which appears to be true) and that its spy plane wasn't in Swedish airspace (which may well also be true).

Yet those [Russian] defenses miss the point.

Russia has been repeatedly buzzing North Atlantic Treaty Organization airspace in recent months, especially in the Baltic region. The alliance says it has had to scramble to intercept Russian military aircraft 400 times this year.

This inevitably creates the risk of an accident, as the Russian planes often have their transponders switched off.

Of course, during the Cold War, Soviet aircraft engaged in this kind of behavior as a matter of routine. Yet those days were different in two ways.

First, the skies were less crowded with civilian traffic. . . . Today, that figure is three times higher.

The other difference was that Soviet pilots, their commanders and their Western counterparts were used to dealing with these risks. They had established ground rules for dealing with them.

But those protocols fell into disuse, while the pilots who used them have retired.

Nor is it clear today how Russia would respond if one of its jets was shot down within NATO airspace.

It is a risk-laden policy that, as MH-17 suggest, can end badly for innocent civilians as well as the Russian interests it is supposed to promote.

Despite his finger pointing, it is Mr. Champion and his herd of fellow travelers, who have missed the point

First, he admits that the Russian aircraft was in international air space and the two planes never came dangerously close to each other.

In other words, a non-problem has mysteriously transformed itself into being both problem and propaganda point.

Second, Mr. Champion assigns Russia sole blame for Ukrainian rebels’ downing of the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine. Yet it was the West’s encroachments on Russia’s borders and its support of the Ukrainian coup (which ousted the sitting president) that began these sphere of influence posturings.

When you push an adversary into an existential geopolitical corner, you cannot fairly criticize him for pushing back in deadly ways. It may be that President Putin overestimated the ability of Ukraine’s Russian rebels not to be stupid in shooting down an airliner. But those things happen, when any nation’s hegemonic back is to the wall.

The United States, today infamous for warish meddling all over the world, is hardly in a moral or intellectual position to accuse the Russian Federation of being a unique pain in the ass.

Third, Mr. Champion also appears to assume that civil aviation pilots should not be required to be alert for what might turn up in front of them. He implies that it is unfortunate that Russian machinations have heightened the need for pilot awareness.

Fair enough. But, again, it is Western aggressiveness that created (a) Russia’s sphere of influence prickliness and (b) its willingness to rub our noses in our past transgressions.

It is a little late to bemoan the consequences of riling an adversary into reasserting its hegemony in unmistakable ways. Which is exactly what all this friction is about. Russia is warning its Western adversaries that enough is enough.

Fourth, Champion appears to intuit that we should not have to recreate the heightened aerial awareness that governed the Cold War. But that is like arguing that accommodating changed circumstances should not be a requirement for personal or international survival.

My point? — stop fooling ourselves with our own BS

When we lack geopolitical objectivity, we tend to push our adversaries into positions that, in turn, escalate our own propensities for war. Unless we intend to do that, it is wise to pay attention to our warped thinking and correct it — before our one-sided blather results in actions that cannot be undone.

The moral? — Stop acting like hysterical children and accept that we started this

If we piss the former KGB guy (and his people) off enough — by starting a propaganda-initiated physical war in their backyard — we increase the probability that we will eventually be evaluating the Hiroshima-Nagasaki-like remnants of where our Western mouths used to be.

We have forgotten that the Federation, weak though it is, is not in the same “pummel at will” category that our other self-created adversaries are or have been. Each of whom, by the way, handed us strategic defeats of cross-generational size.

Some of the warmongers at America’s helm will see hope in the Russian ruble’s fall. My caution would be that an emaciated tiger is likely to become more, rather than less violent.

PeteFree.com

American and NATO Propaganda in Regard to Russian Aerial Probing — Has Deadly Potential to Bite Us Later