The shattered South Korean jet had hardly touched the bottom of the Sea of Japan before Ronald Reagan was at a microphone. his relentlessly supportive wife at his side, spouting the pious indignation which he typically offers as a public display of anger at his counterparts in villainy in the Kremlin:
This murder of innocent civilians is a serious international issue between the Soviet Union and civilised people everywhere who cherish individual rights and human life.
On successive days there was more of these unctuous outrages, which must have been puzzling for all those people in the central American states who have reason to think that Reagan is anything but one who cherishes their individual rights and lives. Except that there was no clapper board, it might have been a re-run of a poorer B movie from the president’s unforgettable past.
In Moscow too the cameras and the microphones were busy: "a rude and deliberate provocation” said the Novosti news agency; “. . . a worldwide, rabid anti- Soviet campaign" was how Tass described the American protests. Russian propaganda of course laid the blame onto American policies; the jet was an “intruder" flying into the “Soviet Union’s airspace" (a matter which we shall have more to say about) and the reaction was prudently defensive. According to British newspapers, this was supported by Russian workers, who reacted in a way typical of workers everywhere who are receptive of the nationalist propaganda of their masters:
What would be your reaction if somebody were to break into your house? (Woman in Moscow, Observer, 4 September 1983.)I consider the reaction of the authorities quite sound. It’s impossible to violate the borders of states and that is why the border guards conducted themselves correctly. (Engineer. Moscow, Sunday Times. 4 September 1983.)
So it is really alright, then. Neither side is to blame because both acted reasonably and with a proper concern for human lives and safety — except that as a result a lot of people got killed, some of them perhaps not too interested in the conflict between the Russian and American power blocs nor in the niceties of scoring a propaganda advantage from human suffering. There is in fact a great deal more to it — more than the loss of the plane and the deaths, more than the official evasions and protests.
First, there is the issue of Russian — or American, or any other — airspace. It is generally assumed (ask those people in the Moscow' street, or in London or New York) that each state has some sort of ownership in the airspace above it and that other states can use it only by permission. But the borders of this airspace are arbitrary and imaginary, perhaps even more so than are those on land which are drawn by conferring politicians at what are known as peace conferences. Some years ago, when the first observation satellites began to orbit, the delicate question was asked, about how far upwards a state’s airspace extended. Was it limited to the earth’s atmosphere or did it go beyond — into interplanetary space, or inter-galactic, or out into the unknown blackness?
These were not idle questions for the "ownership" of airspace is really a matter of denying it to, and defending it against, other states, sometimes for commercial reasons but also for military purposes. The possible conflict over the division of outer space, in the times of spy satellites and orbiting nuclear weapons, is frighteningly active and relevant. The Russian government is quite sure that “their” airspace sits solid and inviolable above the concentrations of naval and military bases and the missile complexes around the Sea of Okhotsk which the South Korean jet flew over. This is one of the most heavily armed, one of the most sensitive, places in the world — and therefore one of the most dangerous. Apart from the airfields and the submarine bases the area includes inter-continental missile sites, aimed at America. According to the Guardian (6 September 1983), about 30 per cent of Russia’s entire strategic missile force is in that Far East region.
Neither Reagan nor the Russians paid any heed to the fact that the whole tragic incident came about because it concerned a segment of the world — there are many others, owned by various states — which is loaded with this equipment for instant, devastating warfare. Perhaps the airliner flew over the place by mistake; perhaps the Russians shot it down by mistake, but the reasons and the motivation behind it all were deliberate and conscious and completely sensible to anyone who accepts the priorities and the moralities of capitalism. This society is split into rival power blocs which are armed to the teeth — or should it be to the brains — with complex and horrifying weapons. Once armies were marched, or shunted about in trains, for days to do battle. Capitalism does it better now; modern war can be practically instantaneous and concluded, leaving the world in devastation, within days. The essence of this style of war is that fingers must be quick to the button and there is little time to recover from mistakes. This is the society which, claim Reagan and the Russian leaders, stands for human rights and safety.
It is likely that the reason for the airliner straying from its prescribed route — and for the American and Japanese tracking stations allowing it to do so — will not be publicly known, at least for some time. One theory is based on a report that South Korean aircraft on that route often took the short cut across the Russian bases to save fuel, rather than use the longer, safer, dog-leg route to the south. This theory has a familiar sound; it would not be the first time human lives have been put at risk, and lost, in the drive to produce cheaper goods and services. If the theory fits the facts, then the bodies in the sea can rest easy for they died in capitalism’s most cherished cause — making the highest profit in the shortest time with the least concern for human interests.
That is the authentic background to this sordid, brutal affair. Capitalism is a collection of massively armed camps because it has to be a society of conflict; it cannot work co-operatively because to do so would contradict its basic feature of producing wealth for profit. Under capitalism production — whether it is of material things like aeroplanes or services like a seat on a flight from Alaska to Seoul — is not carried on to satisfy human needs. It is carried on so that the class who own the airlines and the aircraft and the means of production and distribution at large may fulfil their role of the appropriation of profit. Wheat is grown, cars roll off the assembly line, aircraft fly, the working class are exploited, so that the owning class can realise a profit and accumulate further capital. This provides that class with an urgent interest in a number of things. First, the market where the commodities are sold — in the case of some areas of air travel, a highly competitive market. Second, sources of raw material like metal ore, rubber and oil. Third, the trade routes which connect these to each other and with the points of production.
Internationally the capitalist class dispute over these things and to protect their interests they have built up. through their state machines and with the support of the workers they exploit, a series of armed forces with a destructive power which, in the recent times of piston-engined aircraft and explosive missiles aimed by the human eye, would have seemed fantastic. The places where these weapons are held have to be extremely sensitive; foreign powers cannot be allowed to send their equipment and their military personnel into them without control. So they are defended by sophisticated and horrifyingly final destructive systems, one of which met the South Korean jet. The Russian government. like any other capitalist state, are unlikely to take chances with the safety of their bases; for their ruling class a lot more is at stake than a few hundred lives.
There is, then, nothing unique or even unusual about the shooting down of the airliner. Capitalism is a society of conflict and tension. The dead passengers in the jet were a sacrifice to capitalism’s inability to exist in peace. The remedies offered by both sides — a ban on the operations of Aeroflot, a cooling off in provocation from America — did not even pretend to approach the reality of the matter. All over the world, human beings are at work scanning screens, priming weapons, fingering buttons, checking, servicing, training — for the time when it will all be let loose so that one section of the master class can triumph over another. This is a hairtrigger society which can turn a mistake into a catastrophe.
Ivan
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