What implications do the first troubles of 2014 have? Theres Ukraine, and Russias military maneuvers. Then theres the missing #MH370 plane. Id consider the missing plane first. It is now revealed that the planes transponder had been deliberately turned off as well as all other communication systems in the plane. They went off just before the plane veered off its flight path. It is also reported that a satellite had been receiving signals from the plane till about 8 a.m. The plane had gone off radar at about midnight. Therefore it is now confirmed that this plane flew for at least seven hours after its change of course. I think this is a case of a hijack, a terror hijack maybe. First of all, the pilot never reported that something was wrong with the plane. And now we know that the communication systems on the plane were deliberately turned off. Lastly, we know that this plane flew for about seven hours after its disappearance. This chain of information leaves some questions to be answered: 1) If the Malaysian authorities had known that a satellite had kept on receiving signals from the plane for seven hours after it had disappeared, why did it not share the information with those countries helping with the search? Why did it wait for about a week of fruitless and clearly unnecessary and wasteful search efforts at sea? Although it is reported that this particular satellite could not give an exact location of where this signal was coming from, I am quite sure that if this information had been shared earlier with better technologically equipped countries like the United States, or even China, they could have done something meaningful with it. 2) Now this concerns those of us on the ground. If this plane flew for seven more hours after it disappeared off monitoring systems, and yet no country or its military could say, oh, we are detecting an unauthorized entry into our airspace. Lets identify it, are we really safe? I mean, you only have to remember the 9/11 attacks. They were carried out by hijacked planes. Now one would think that after such a catastrophic event, every state would have improved its monitoring systems to track all flights within its airspace and therefore be one or many steps ahead of a terror attack via aircraft. Obviously, none of the countries within the suspected flight path of this plane has done this. If I push this thought a little further, I could say that this last one week has been seven days in which we could have been mourning another 9/11 incident.... Without a doubt, airspace security needs to be beefed up, both at domestic and international levels. Moving on to Ukraine. Perhaps the Arab Spring has inspired more than what we initially thought. At first, we saw people protesting against and removing despots from power. But now, we are seeing people remove elected political office holders through protests on the streets. The idea is that if you could trigger a gunshot from government forces trying to bring in some calm, then your position gets a boost: not only is your government a failure at providing as it ought to, it is also a heartless criminal, committing crimes against humanity or its violating its responsibility to protect. Well, this idea works. It worked in Egypt when Muhammed Morsi was forced out of office and then put on trial. The democratic West did little about it than give speeches that were neither here nor there. Today, we see this phenomenon in Ukraine. This time, the protesters had the backing of a regional inter-governmental organisation, an organisation Ukraine does not even belong to. And they succeeded in removing their head of government. The E.U has made bold statements such as, The future of Ukraine belongs with the E.U. This is a departure from the usual rhetoric that the future of a state belongs with its people. Perhaps this a lesson from Syria. The people arent always effective in bringing in the future. An IGO is better suited. This is worrisome. Such moves could provoke extreme responses. Already, Russia has shown that it is not buying the E.Us talk, even when there are threats of isolation. It has moved its soldiers into parts of Ukraine, Crimea to precise, and it is not backing down. Whether we like to say it or not, the thing called sphere of influence still exists and it remains a part of a states core interests. Core interests are those things states could go to war for. Russia is willing to fire its cannons over Ukraines romance with the E.U. Its called alliance politics and it played a fundamental and destructive role in the two world wars we had in the last century. How much importance have IGOs assumed today, such that they could sponsor the replacement of elected officials in countries that are not their members? Perhaps youd have a clearer picture when you see that Ukraines head of government had resisted joining the E.U...therefore he was removed. That says something remarkable. What do you think?
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 11:02:52 +0000
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