Before the name became synonymous with an earnest rock band whose ideological offspring have emasculated the genre beyond saving, U2 equated with a US spy plane of the original Cold War era. U2 went from being a mundane military term to a global buzzword in 1960 when the aircraft flown by American pilot Gary Powers was shot down in Soviet airspace during a clandestine surveillance mission. The plane was downed by a surface-to-air missile and the American authorities initially insisted the plane wasn’t a plane but was actually a weather research aircraft – perhaps a bit like those Chinese balloons spotted over the US a month or so ago. However, in one of the great propaganda coups of the period, the Russians paraded Powers (who had parachuted to safety) before the cameras and produced the aerial photographs of military bases the pilot had been dispatched to snap. An embarrassed America was forced to come clean just weeks before President Eisenhower was scheduled to meet Soviet Premier Khrushchev (a summit meeting which was cancelled as a consequence), despite rightly pointing out their tactics were hardly unique at the time – and indeed proved priceless when it came to Cuba a couple of years later; Powers was tried, found guilty of espionage and received a characteristically harsh seven-year sentence before returning home via a prisoner exchange in 1962.
Over half-a-century later, manned missions are no longer necessary for that kind of work, but even their automated successors can run into trouble. Aided by the conflict in Ukraine, relations between the US and Russia are arguably at their lowest level since the days when Gary Powers took his ill-fated flight, and yesterday an American MQ-9 Reaper drone – a small surveillance aircraft – had a too-close encounter with a Russian fighter jet and was last seen plunging into the Black Sea. As is traditional, both sides offer different explanations for the incident and both see the collision as an act of provocation by the other party. A statement from the Pentagon said ‘Our MQ-9 aircraft was conducting routine operations in international airspace when it was intercepted and hit by a Russian aircraft, resulting in a crash and a complete loss of the MQ-9’, before adding the alleged Russian actions could lead to ‘miscalculation and unintended escalation’. Well, that’s something else to help you sleep better at night innit.
The Black Sea itself has been what one might call ‘a hot spot’ since the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, but the invasion of Ukraine last year has seen an increase in surveillance jaunts over the area; whilst US and UK aircraft hovering around the region have officially remained in international airspace, there’s always the understandable suspicion the odd plane sneaks ‘behind enemy lines’. Russian aircraft are hardly noted for scrupulously observing the rules when it comes to the airspace of a sovereign nation, so it wouldn’t be a great stretch of the imagination to envisage Western aircraft doing likewise. The incident that occurred yesterday was clearly viewed by Washington as deliberate rather than an accident, which implies that if the drone remained in international airspace at the time of the collision, this was indeed the Russians overstepping the mark. This perspective certainly holds sway in the US, resulting in the Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov being summoned to provide an explanation; back home in Moscow, however, the state media regarded the presence of the drone as ‘a provocation’. Tit for tat, then.
The Pentagon claims the ‘unsafe, unprofessional’ actions on the part of the Russian aircraft consisted of dumping fuel in the flight path of the drone in a ‘reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner’, followed by a collision with it that eventually caused it to fall to earth. According to the National Security Council, this incident wasn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it was the most significant to date in terms of damage done. The US didn’t reveal the precise location where the drone landed or if the Russian Navy had embarked on a search for it, but the notion of such sensitive equipment falling into enemy hands is naturally undesirable; it would seem the US used remote pilots to ensure the drone splashed down somewhere in the Black Sea following the collision, which was probably the safest option given the delicate situation, though that doesn’t necessarily mean its secrets are secure on the sea bed. The support being given to Ukraine by the West isn’t limited to providing military hardware, but military intelligence; Kyiv has become dependent on the findings of Western surveillance drones revealing everything from the launching of missiles to the movement of Russian vessels in the Black Sea. It goes without saying that this information going astray wouldn’t help the Ukrainian cause.
Russia, on its part, has demanded the US cease what it refers to as ‘hostile flights’ into Russian airspace; the same Ambassador who was called to provide an explanation for his nation’s actions yesterday, Anatoly Antonov, was prompted to say, ‘We presume the United States will refrain from further speculation in the media space and will stop flying near Russian borders’. There have certainly been some fairly unambiguous indications via Russian state media that the remains of the drone are being actively sought by Russian authorities, though the White House’s spokesman John Kirby has insisted the likelihood of it being recovered – by either side – seems fairly slim. ‘I’m not sure that we’re going to be able to recover it,’ he said. ‘Where it fell into the Black Sea – very, very deep water; so we’re still assessing whether there can be any kind of recovery effort. There may not be.’ Mr Kirby then did his best to affirm that any information the drone contained wouldn’t be much use to Moscow anyway – ‘We did the best we could to minimise any intelligence value that might come from somebody else getting their hands on that drone,’ he added. Two lines from the old Megadeth song, ‘Hanger 18’ now spring to mind – ‘Military intelligence/two words combined that don’t make sense’; Thrash Metal, not known for its profound observations, occasionally delivers the goods.
This incident is clearly not on the same propaganda level as the U2 affair of 1960; for one thing, there is no all-American boy to present as evidence and (as yet) no drone to produce as the next best thing. But it does perhaps highlight yet again the tensions along an international fault-line between East and West that appears as wobbly today as it was 60 years ago. Events in Ukraine and Putin’s persecution complex have combined to create a climate of suspicion and mutual mistrust that has a distinctly chilly whiff of Cold War air about it, with the Kremlin declaring that relations with the US are in a ‘lamentable state’ on the same day that RAF and German fighter jets intercepted a Russian aircraft drifting into Estonian airspace on behalf of NATO. Indeed, sometimes it feels like the Berlin Wall never fell after all.
I suppose a key difference re the West on our rebooted Cold War front is the notable lack of pro-Russian sympathies on this side of the divide. First time round, there were strong Soviet leanings on the Left that ran all the way from university campuses to the grubby backrooms of Trades Union branches; the same attitudes that had turned a blind eye to Stalin’s purges in the 1930s and were strengthened by our alliance with the USSR against Nazi Germany during WWII held firm that Communism was the only alternative to capitalism’s iniquities; even events in Hungary and Czechoslovakia couldn’t shake that conviction. Today, the sole Russians the West courts are exiled oligarchs whilst Putin’s regime is viewed as akin to Hitler’s by all but a few scattered apologists; the popular cause is Ukraine, and Russia is regarded very much as the evil aggressor. A superior state of affairs to those in the past, perhaps; but still very black and white, still very Us and Them – which rarely bodes well for future international relations.
© The Editor
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The absence of commemorative events marking the occasion could easily blind the ignorant to the fact October 1962 was something of a pivotal turning point in recent history. Yes, on the 5th of that month 60 years ago, two significant pop cultural events occurred that elevated Britain out of its post-colonial hangover and gave the nation – and eventually the whole Western world – the kiss of life: the simultaneous release of the first Beatles single, ‘Love Me Do’, and the first James Bond film, ‘Dr No’. But the importance of these releases in shaping the 60s wasn’t immediately apparent, what with global eyes distracted by an island 80 nautical miles off the coast of Florida. Mind you, Cuba had hogged its fair share of headlines since the overthrow of President Batista by Fidel Castro and his band of hairy revolutionaries in 1959; the Bay of Pigs fiasco had only taken place the year before 1962, of course, and when Cuba’s new regime found its Faustian pact with the USSR required setting aside land for Soviet missiles aimed at America, the US response to this encroachment on its doorstep was to blockade Cuba and mobilise its troops into war mode.
In the wake of other (somewhat distracting) events over the past seven days, footage that has snuck largely under the radar nevertheless glaringly highlights the contradiction in the narrative the Kremlin has been pedalling ever since the Russian military encroached into sovereign territory earlier this year. Fancy that! Yes, some may recall the fairy stories of ‘Far-Right Nazis’ running riot through the former Soviet outpost that the Ukrainian people begged to be liberated from (fairy stories served-up as one element of the justification for invasion), though the reaction of the Ukrainian people via videos posted on social media as Ukrainian forces stormed into town and retook territory didn’t necessarily portray a terrified populace bereft at losing their Russian liberators. In many respects, the footage evoked archive of the French people reacting to Allied Forces recapturing Paris in 1944 – with little old ladies in headscarves tearfully embracing Ukrainian troops and giving every impression they were actually pleased to see the ‘Nazis’ back in town.
He was always good at timing, Mikhail Gorbachev. His elevation to de facto Soviet leader in 1985 was good timing for a West wearying of four decades playing a chess-game with only one potential checkmate in sight; he offered a far more optimistic future than the diehard dodderers he succeeded and arrived in office right at the very moment when his opposite number in the White House was open to de-escalating the arms race. His death at the age of 91 has reminded the world there once was a time when Russia was led by a man who (to paraphrase Mrs Thatcher) the West ‘could do business with’ – as opposed to a warmongering megalomaniac turning back the clock that Gorbachev stopped. And his death comes at a point when his most despotic successor is doing his utmost to trash the progress made by one of the world’s last great statesmen; after all, if any single individual deserves credit for accelerating the end of what I guess we must now refer to as the First Cold War, it was Mikhail Gorbachev.
It could be worse, I guess – we could be Germany; no, this isn’t anything to do with the War, not the 1939-’45 one, anyway. Events in Ukraine that have been in full swing for six months now have undoubtedly impacted on life in Western Europe, especially when it comes to the import & export trade, though Tsar Vlad’s invasion does provide politicians with a convenient get-out-of-jail card, one that serves to obscure their own failings over the past two or three years. Don’t blame it on the sunshine, don’t blame it on the moonlight, don’t blame it on the good times – blame it on Ukraine. Don’t blame it on the lockdown, don’t blame it on Covid, don’t blame it on Net Zero – blame it on Ukraine. Considering Germany’s somewhat…er…problematic history with Russia, perhaps Frau Merkel reckoned it was a nice reconciliatory gesture to entrust the old enemy with providing the majority of Germany’s gas imports. She obviously (not to say inexplicably) didn’t foresee a time when Comrade Putin might use this to his advantage; after all, it’s not as if he hasn’t sought to extend his nation’s current borders via military means in the past, is it?
Media types who weren’t even there have spent several months now banging on about how Britain is going ‘back to the 70s’ simply because they assume today’s perilous economic climate is somehow comparable to that of a decade they only know through endlessly recycled clichés of candlelit households, picket lines, and pavements piled high with rubbish. Ironically, however, whilst the hysterical heads on our news channels were promoting the cost-of-living crisis as the embodiment of this narrative, the summer’s premier sporting contest came close to experiencing a moment genuinely reminiscent of a 70s incident that almost caused its cancellation 49 years ago. Like Wimbledon 2022, Wimbledon 1973 saw a British man reach the semi-final of the singles’ tournament, yet the achievements of both Cameron Norrie and Roger Taylor were overshadowed by events off-court.
Now there’s no longer anyone left alive to separate fact from fiction, we’re pretty much stuck with the myth of the World War I Home Front, whereby each Zeppelin raid was followed by the communal kicking of Dachshunds on the street and the smashing of shop windows bearing Germanic names. Whether or not this actually happened doesn’t seem to matter anymore because all our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers (who might have been witness to such incidents) are gone; it’s become absorbed into the second-hand narrative of a conflict too far away to bear any relevance to the here and now. But we do know for certain that anti-German sentiments forced our very own royal household to change their family name, wary that Saxe-Coburg–Gotha was a tad too Teutonic a moniker to rally round when the King’s own cousin was responsible for starting the whole bloody mess in the first place; if the newly-christened House of Windsor could decline sanctuary to the Tsar (when he was supposed to be our ally), its commitment to the preservation of Albion in the face of foreign aggression seemed pretty sound – and few foreigners were more aggressive towards Albion in the 20th century than the Germans. Chances are, then, some of the myths re opposition to all things German are rooted in truth; war has a habit of legitimising bigotry, after all.
It wasn’t so long ago – barely a year – that the British people were barred from allowing more than six people into their abodes. They couldn’t visit ailing family members in hospitals or care homes; they could only attend funerals in small, specified numbers – and heavy-handed Jobsworths were on hand to gleefully ensure there was no physical contact between the grievers; they couldn’t gather in the open to mark Remembrance Sunday; they couldn’t celebrate Christmas together; they couldn’t hold a vigil for a murdered woman in an outdoor environment without the police treating them like violent protestors; they couldn’t stage a demonstration unless their cause was one approved by the authorities – climate change or BLM, yes/anti-lockdown or anti-vax, no; they couldn’t even worship in churches whose doors were bolted. Small businesses went to the wall, crippled by both enforced closure and then uneconomic restrictions when tentatively reopening (if they’d managed to survive).
When a long (ish) life means you find yourself with feet on either side of a divide that separates one era from another, it can be interesting to realise how a personal living memory is little more than a Wikipedia entry to those who emerge in the years and decades after the world map is redrawn. Unencumbered by any remembrance of how things used to be, those for whom the Iron Curtain or Apartheid are as irrelevant to the here and now as Ancient Egypt or the Incas invariably see the past in a completely different light. I guess for anyone of a certain age – i.e. over 40 – the demolition of the Berlin Wall and the release of Nelson Mandela had an immense significance that is difficult to articulate to someone born after 1990; and, to be honest, it can sometimes be easy to forget the way things were even if you were there. I remember once watching a documentary about Live Aid in which a member of Paul Weller’s Style Council recalled how the band had a testing journey to reach Wembley Stadium on the day, flying from an overseas tour that required taking the long way round on account of not being able to venture into Soviet airspace. The recollection served as a reminder of just how different the global situation was then.
A decade or so ago, an ordinary member of the public whose job was either that of delivery man or taxi driver (his profession, as with his name, escapes me now) strolled onto the set of a BBC news programme and was inadvertently taken for a hired expert; roped in for a response to a story concerning big tech behemoth Apple, his absolute ignorance of the item in question and bewilderment with the surreal predicament he found himself in was instantly evident, yet he managed to create a moment of comedy gold that was repeatedly parodied for as long as its currency remained relevant. In a way, it summed up the needless emptiness of rolling news channels and their habit of pointlessly pontificating on every minor headline simply to fill the vast void of hours stretching out way beyond the point at which even the most casual viewer loses the will to live. The sudden accidental injection of humour into proceedings was a brief respite from the tedium though, had it not been picked up by social media, chances are few would have noticed it had happened.
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