It was a week completely absorbed by a number of geopolitical crises facing the Obama administration – and leaving the rest of us skittish about riding planes. Within the span of 24 hours, all hell broke loose as if the apocalypse lit up: pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine got trigger happy and mistakenly blew up a commercial air flight and a few thousand miles away. Israel, figuring Western civilization would be distracted by crisis in Central Europe, got busy commencing a ground invasion against Hamas in the Gaza strip. And, always wanting a spotlight, North Korea couldn’t help but escalate new rounds of missile tests, a move that’s making its neighbors jumpy all over again.
That it has not been a good year for Malaysia Airlines is a severe understatement. First the mysterious ghoul-like disappearance of Flight 370, now a Boeing 777 tagged as Flight 17 … lots of sevens. How the airline will remain solvent or exist will more than likely depend on the Malaysian government since it’s the flagship carrier for the country. But, important and rather simple questions arise in the wake of Flight 17’s tragic misfortune. What was it doing over a conflict zone in the first place?
Common sense would dictate going around that spot – the one where pro-Russian separatists are busily blasting Ukrainian military aircraft out of the sky. For some reason, Malaysia Airlines, along with Air France, British Airways and Russian airliner Aeroflot were all flying over eastern Ukrainian airspace as if nothing was going on down below. So now, according to the aviation tracking news site FlightRadar24, everyone gets it, time to move away from the yellow tape (see below):
Ukrainian aviation officials didn’t necessarily make it a no-fly zone, despite the obvious presence of surface-to-air missiles, but they did say airlines could fly over so long as it was more than 23,000 feet. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration was smart enough to advise American airlines to stay away. Either these other airlines were hard pressed to save a buck on gas or Europeans and select Asian airlines are just that impervious to risk, who knows. The question will come up in litigation.
Some now feel the world’s on fire. The cat who pulled that trigger, from what’s been reported, could be wishing he could go back in time … if he was able to stay alive in what was surely one of the most intense geopolitical plays at “Cover Your Ass” ever attempted. Word went out about the shoot down over the wire while at a recent conference on an unrelated subject, attendees looking at each other with wide-open eyes and round scary faces all casting for Van Gogh’s The Scream. There was a collective, but silent “oh shit. So what happens next?”
In terms of foreign policy, it may seem like the Obama administration is under siege and unable to manage a gushing open fire hydrant of one crisis after another – and there’s no one there to shut it down. While navigating this maelstrom of bad headlines, he’s also struggling to apply his signature calm-in-the-storm model critics are always quick to ping him on. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) believes Obama has gone AWOL and former Rep. Allen West (R-FL), never shying away from an opportunity to put his foot in his mouth, compares the president to pre-World War II British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain acquiescing Europe to Hitler.
Handpicked foreign affairs go-to-guy Fareed Zakaria is slightly sanguine about it all, cautioning us not to get too jittery and that the world – contrary to the same tragic headline on a constant loop – is really not blowing up anytime soon. “For all the problems, let’s keep in mind that we live today in a world with considerably fewer dangers,” writes Zakaria. “Nuclear war is unimaginable. The Russian-American nuclear arsenals are down to one-fifth their size in 1973 and at a much lower level of readiness. In 1973, Freedom House published its first annual account of political rights around the world. At the time, countries listed as “not free” outnumbered “free” countries. Today that is inverted, with the number of “free” countries having doubled. Open markets, trade and travel have boomed, allowing hundreds of millions to escape poverty and live better lives.”
He might be right. As this Center for Systemic Peace graph shows, global conflicts have been on a downward trend since the end of the Cold War:
Much of that has to do with the fact that various conflict players have fewer sources of state-sponsored military-backed assets to tap into. Thus, a rise in terrorism in the next graph below (courtesy of The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism at the University of Maryland) during years following the Cold War is no coincidence, merely the result of violent actors resorting to less conventional or “assymetrical” warfare without any imperial benefactors to help them out. So, you get messy:
One wonders how this changes things. Bloggers Robert Beckhusen & Matthew Gault over at War is Boring suggest that it might actually calm things down in eastern Ukraine. “Shooting down a civilian airliner is an international crisis more serious than anything since Russia’s invasion of Crimea in February. Destroying a civilian airliner is a big deal,” adds Beckhusen and Gault. Basically, that mistake just cost a lot of global trade.
However, if it doesn’t then what next? Could crisis in the Ukraine heat up or a revival of an Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip suddenly change this comparitively “peaceful” global conflict dynamic? Clearly, the U.S. is looking to eliminate as many major regional or global competitors as it can in a bid to find some balance – as it’s presently doing with Iran now. But, depending on how President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin navigate tensions, we may see a re-escalation of the Cold War or we might not. Obama, for his part, will play it cool and let it all flesh out nicely.
You could tell, however, that this is a president not anxious to jump into any new volatile military commitments. And, who can blame him after more than a decade of World War III, right? His goal, we can tell, is to simply avoid World War IV. There’s no amount of Congressional fury or taunts from Republicans that can change his mind. So, there’s a bit of “you do you” from this president as far as folks in Central Europe and the Middle East. That said, he keeps a close, wary eye on the situation while using very invasive and effective slow-bleed financial sanctions tools at his disposal. Don’t think those work? Refer to exhibit A and you’ll find Iran already crying uncle at the table. Still, recent events could tip the scales back in the wrong direction.
CHARLES D. ELLISON is a veteran political strategist and Chief Political Correspondent for UPTOWN Magazine. He is Washington Correspondent for the Philadelphia Tribune and a frequent contributor to The Root. He can be reached @charlesdellison.