In 1983, the Soviet Union apparently shot down a Korean airliner that was off-course over Sakhalin Island, a Soviet submarine port. 269 people perished. My father, John Keppel, a retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer, questioned the U.S. government’s account and called for an independent Congressional investigation.
The apparent missile shootdown of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine also deserves independent investigation, but clearly in both cases innocent people lost their lives when civilian airliners crossed zones of intense conflict. Many civilians have been killed in recent battles in eastern Ukraine after government forces ended a truce with separatists.
If pro-Russian rebels mistook the Malaysian plane for a Ukrainian military aircraft, their mistake, though criminally reckless, was not unique. Ukraine shot down a Russian airliner in 2001, and the U.S. downed an Iranian civilian Airbus in 1988, killing 290.
The Reagan administration seized on the 1983 Korean Airlines tragedy to push Europeans to accept deployment of cruise and Pershing II missiles on their soil. Senator John McCain already speaks of the Malaysian Airlines tragedy as a “game-changer.”
One hundred years ago, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo led to the cataclysm of world war. This is no time for games. NATO deployments in or near Ukraine would be especially provocative. A new Cold War on the border of a resentful, nuclear armed Russia would carry incalculable risk, to which the Malaysian Airlines tragedy is just a clue.
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