As this volume was in preparation, an incident revealed in stark-

est terms the clash of two very different cultures, Soviet and

American, on the propriety of resort to violence. A political and

ethical gulf was never more clearly delineated than in the world

reaction to the deliberate Soviet shooting down of a Korean

airliner with 269 civilians aboard, including 61 Americans, at

0326 Korean time on September 1, 1983. The regularly sched-

uled passenger aircraft had strayed off course and passed

through Soviet airspace over Kamchatka Peninsula and then

over Sakhalin Island. The Korean pilot, apparently unaware of

any navigational error, reported to Tokyo at 0323 Korean time

that he was on the planned track northeast of Hokkaido, Japan.

After more than two hours of radar tracking of this aircraft and

a near approach to it by a Soviet interceptor aircraft from Sakha-

lin, Soviet authorities gave instructions to fire a missile at the

Korean plane as it was leaving Sakhalin and approaching the Sea

of Japan. According to intercepted voice transmissions, the

Soviet pilot reported at 0326 Korean time, "The target is de-

stroyed. I am breaking off attack. " The aircraft disappeared

from radar screens at 16,000 feet altitude three minutes later.

Everyone aboard was killed in the plane s plunge to the sea.

Despite the reaction of horror from the United States and

most of the rest of the world, the Soviet Union has refused to

recognize any error in this destruction of innocent human lives,

because the aircraft had crossed the "sacred borders" of Soviet

territory.

This concept of the political rights of the state overriding hu-

man life portends more and more politically inspired violence of

the kind Americans find hard to believe. Revolutionary violence

and guerrilla wars have spread to every continent in the past

decade, just as a close reading of Soviet doctrinal literature indi-