What Happens When Superpower Air Defenses
Really Fail
Eleven years ago yesterday the trial against Matthias Rust began in Moscow. A
few months earlier, on May 28, 1987, the 19-year-old German had landed his
single-engine Cessna about 100 meters from Red Square. There are still
unanswered questions about how this amateur pilot was able to penetrate what
Bill Keller of the New York Times called “the world’s most
vaunted air defenses”
(NYT,
June 7, 1987 ).
There is no question, though, about the aftermath:
“With surprising speed and openness, Defense Minister Sergei L. Sokolov, 75, was
retired. The commander of the air defense system, Marshal Aleksandr I. Koldunov,
was sacked with a harsh rebuke from the ruling Politburo. Other senior military
figures were expected to be removed more quietly.”
“According to William E. Odom, former director of the National Security Agency
and author of The Collapse of the Soviet Military, Rust’s flight damaged the
reputation of the vast Soviet military and enabled Gorbachev to remove the
staunchest opponents to his reforms. Within days of Rust’s landing, the Soviet
defense minister and the Soviet air defense chief were sacked. In a matter of
weeks, hundreds of other officers were fired or replaced—from the country’s most
revered war heroes to scores of lesser officers. It was the biggest turnover in
the Soviet military command since Stalin’s bloody purges of the 1930s.
“More important than the replacement of specific individuals, analyst John Pike
says, was the change Rust’s flight precipitated in the public’s perception of
the military. The myth of Soviet military superiority had been punctured, and
with it the almost religious reverence the public had held for its armed forces.
“For decades, Soviet citizens had been led to believe “the West was poised to
destroy them…that if they let their guard down for an instant that they would be
obliterated,” says Pike. It was this thinking that helped perpetuate the cold
war. Rust’s flight proved otherwise: The Soviet Union could suffer a breach
without being destroyed by external forces. Ultimately, of course, it would be
internal forces that would do the job.”
We need only compare this to what happened in the US after 9/11 to see the
obvious. Even if 19 aeronautically challenged Arabs with box cutters directed by
a cave-dweller (though a rich one) in Afghanistan were actually able to
penetrate what is certainly at least the second “ world’s most vaunted air
defenses,” not once but three times in two cities, striking the heart of the
financial district and the military command and killing three thousand people
(not to mention myriad other technological feats such as turning skyscrapers
into dust, even without hitting them, and disintegrating upon impact with
virtually no trace, never before witnessed in the history of the world) -- even
if this actually did happen the way we are told, heads would have rolled, to put
it mildly. But no heads rolled after 9/11. No one was fired, no one was rebuked.
Instead we got the Patriot Acts, Homeland Security, torture, preemptive
perpetual war on terror, etc.
How much denial is required not to see that this was not only an inside job but
meant to be understood as such? (See
“MITOP
and the Double Bind.” ) Until we realize that it is 1984 + 24, we are not
going to get anywhere but to 1984 + 25.
Michael D. Morrissey
http://www.mdmorrissey.info/rust
