Bad Luck, and Lots Of It

Sometimes what looks terrible misfortune is simply what it seems — sheer bad luck. In the horrifying plane crash in western Russia that just killed some of Poland’s top officials, including President Lech Kaczynski, there is no sign at this stage of foul play. Reports so far are focusing on pilot error, fog, and the use of a Soviet-built Tupolev-154 for the presidential transport (Fox provides a list of Tupolev-154 crashes over the past 16 years).

But these sure do seem to be unlucky times for America’s allies, even as President Barack Obama goes into a fizz of activity advertised by the White House as making the world safer — jetting to Prague to sign a nuclear reduction deal with the Russians, hosting a nuclear summit next week in Washington, and producing a new “nuclear posture” in which the theory seems to be that if America preemptively disarms itself, we’ll all be more secure.

Meanwhile, a violent uprising has just ousted the president of Kyrgyzstan, which hosts the Manas military base (well, it used to be called an “air base” but these days it’s called a “transit center”)– chief transit point for U.S. forces serving in Afghanistan. Whether this plays into Moscow’s hands is still a matter of debate, but there’s no question that it has disrupted operations at Manas, where U.S. troop flights have been indefinitely suspended.

This follows the March 26 sinking of a South Korean frigate, the Cheonan, which — as North Korea expert Andrei Lankov describes in a recent NY Times Op-ed — was patrolling coastal waters near a disputed border with North Korea, when its stern was ripped away by an explosion. The warship sank; 46 South Korean sailors died. Despite signs suggesting the cause was a mine or a torpedo, the South Korean government has declined to confront North Korea, warning against jumping to conclusions.

And then there are the Israeli nuclear scientists connected with the Dimona reactor who, according to a report in the Israeli press (see Roger Simon’s post here),  have recently — one and all — been denied visas to the U.S. If the account is accurate, then this amounts to a startling reversal of longstanding U.S. policy. But if you listen to the State Department, there’s nothing going on here except maybe some bad luck for these particular Israeli scientists. Here an excerpt on that from the State Department’s Friday, April 9 press briefing:

QUESTION: Can I go back to Israel for a second – non nuclear? Well, actually it’s – actually it’s somewhat nuclear. There’s a report in an Israel newspaper that says that the U.S. is denying visas to Israeli nuclear scientists who want to come to the States. Can you say anything about that?

MR. CROWLEY: Without commenting on individual visa determinations which are governed by the Privacy Act, we continue to issue visas to Israeli scientists, including nuclear scientists, on a regular basis. We’ve actually improved processing times for visas for scientific exchanges with Israel. So there’s been – it has been suggested there’s been a policy change. There has not been a policy change. And we continue to support exchanges with the Israeli scientific and academic communities.

QUESTION: So this report is wrong?

MR. CROWLEY: To the extent the report is that we’ve stopped providing visas to Israeli scientists as a whole, that report is wrong.

As I was saying, there’s an extraordinary rash of bad luck out there at the moment, on many fronts — at least for friends of the United States. A presidential plane crash, a presidential ouster, a sunken warship and Israeli nuclear scientists who reportedly cannot even get U.S. visas.

Far be it from any of us to start spinning conspiracy theories, or blaming anyone other than Dame Fortune — given the various official accounts to date. But if anyone out there is plotting a very contemporary thriller, and wants to open with one of those action collages featuring a gripping series of apparently unrelated events, scattered around the globe, but all pertaining to growing peril for the U.S. and its allies, the daily news right now is rich in grist.