President Reagan seems to have been surprised when he learned in late 1983 that "many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans...as potential aggressors who might hurl weapons at them in a first strike." Well if Reagan paid a bit more attention to our nation's interfering in the affairs of others and using "phony" provocations to start conflicts-maybe he would not have been as surprised. Reagan also appears to have had his horror of a nuclear war strengthened by watching a preview of the 1983 ABC television movie The Day After, which showed the destruction of Lawrence, Kansas, after a nuclear exchange with the Soviets. This probably shouldn't have come as a surprise for a president who always seemed to be "acting" and who quoted events from movies as if they happened in real life. However, this time Reagan being influenced by a movie was probably a good thing. Typically some administration officials felt that the ABC movie could play right into the hands of Soviet propagandists, but their commander in chief had a completely different view. In his diary, Reagan noted: It's powerfully done, all $7 million worth. It's very effective and left me very depressed. We have to do all we can to have a deterrent and to see there is never a nuclear war." Even so there wouldn't be any great changes in superpower relations as long as the old guard remained in power. Yuri Andropov had wanted badly for his protege, Mikhail Gorbachev, to be his successor. Andropov's wishes were denied by a septugenarian cabal that wasn't ready (and perhaps never would be until they all died!) to hand the reigns of power to a new generation. When Andropov died on 9 February 1984, the post of general secretary passed to the semi-comatose Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko-the man who had once held so much sway over Brezhnev's cigarettes! Chernenko was already a dying man upon his succession. Gorbachev's hopes of getting the top job were scotched by the 78 year old Prime Minister Nikolai Tikhonov. In a conversation with his colleagues Tikhonov was overheard saying, "Mikhail is still very young. It's unclear how he would behave in such a position. Kostya is the one we need." The geriatrics had their way this time, and would even give it another go when Chernenko died only 13 months later.
I have probably gone further into this article about other subjects than KAL 007 than I intended. I will end this series by saying a couple of things about the shootdown. First of all, the Cold War was an enormous waste of human resources. I can start to get really upset if I begin to think about where humanity would be if we humans didn't have this endless propensity for violence-and sorry to sound crude but this constant battle between nations and their propagandists to "see whose dick is bigger?" And what are those missiles that can wipe out whole cities (or if they have multiple warheads -multiple cities) at one go, if not hugely phallic symbols? In my very humble opinion I am surprised, but very pleasantly surprised that we "made" it through the Cold War intact. Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is a terrible and tragic reminder that the Cold War did kill people. This is what I think the tragedy boils down to: the people aboard that doomed flight were victims of the Cold War. There are a number of conspiracy theories from the left and the right about this incident. In a way that is sad too, that one's opinion of what happened would be based only on politics and not where the evidence leads.
The right-wing conspiracy theories say that the Soviets knew exactly what they were shooting down and then many of them go on to say the downing was because of Larry McDonald, the very anti-Soviet congressman from Georgia's seventh district who was on KAL 007. The left-wing conspiracy theories say that KAL 007 was on an out and out spying mission for the United States to see how fast the Soviet Union's radar and military would respond to an intruder-and how well it would respond. Note: as with many conspiracy theories there are many variations around these two themes-these are just the major ones. With KAL 007 I don't think there is enough information to judge what happened either way and tend towards the extremely tragic mistake explanation. I will say that I truly do not believe that Gennady Osipovich knew he was taking down a plane full of civilians at first, and I will also say that this doesn't excuse the lies the Soviets told about the incident. The terribly cold and beaureaucratic way high Soviet officials acted is also inexcusable. Against "our" side I will say that I do wonder why such an experienced pilot as Captain Chun missed so many chances to see that his plane was way off course. Remember he was a very experienced pilot and trusted so well that he served South Korean leaders as a pilot. I also have no doubt that there are those in our "security" agencies who might see a civilian plane going off course and let it stay that way as opposed to warning it to gain data about Soviet defenses-perhaps thinking the plane would simply be "escorted" out of Soviet airspace instead of being blown out of the sky.
I will add just a couple more thoughts and would love to hear from anyone with anything to say. I would also like to dedicate this little series to the victims and their families and friends of Korean Air Lines 007. My whole point in doing this series was to hopefully show that not only did people die during the Cold War but that it was a terrble waste of every kind of resource imaginable. I can only hope, along with millions-maybe billions of others that mankind learns to be -well more of what it is supposed to mean to be human in the future!
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