Initial reports by CNN and BBC claimed that Azerbaijan Airlines Flight J2-8243 was brought down by a bird strike. But the Wall Street Journal has now published new evidence that suggests that the passenger jet, traveling from Baku to Grozny, may have been shot down by anti-aircraft weaponry.
This is the fog of war in action. We are now in a chaotic, polarized world environment where violence and fear override reason. Those thinking that a plane crash in a far off Eastern European country has nothing to do with us Singaporeans, would be wrong. It only took the assassination of a minor duke to plunge the world into a World War.
This incident brings to mind the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in 2014, when a Russian missile destroyed a civilian aircraft, killing 298 people. That tragedy, too, was a result of war’s chaos and confusion. What many Singaporeans don’t realize is how close we came to being directly affected. Singapore Airlines Flight SQ351 was just 30 kilometers away from MH17 at the time. That’s less than 3 minutes of flight time.
SQ351 was three minutes away from being targeted. It could have just as easily been our plane. This proximity underscores a harsh reality: no matter how far removed Singapore seems from these conflicts, the consequences can hit much closer to home than we’d like to admit.
Singapore has worked hard to shield Singaporeans from the harsh realities of a dangerous world. Diplomatically, we’ve positioned ourselves as neutral and valuable to major powers, ensuring that even if we don’t get protection from either, we are still relevant and useful to each.
Militarily, we are outspending our neighbours in defensive weaponry and building up our defence forces. Incidentally, the most cutting-edge defensive systems come from Israel and the US, two nations that understand survival in hostile environments.
Economically, we make sure we’re not in debt to other countries, and that we have a strong economy to fund all of this. And people might not like to hear this, but politically, our best defence against the bad actions of foreign states is to have a strong, united government.
Governments that have had massive infighting and political bickering, have very little mindspace to devote to the security of the country. Take the MH17 incident again, as well as the death and killing of Kim Jong-Nam. These incidents occured at a time when the government in Malaysia was suffering from intense infighting. Bad state actors know that internal division is an easy entry point for foreign interference.
The strategies that Singapore pursues aren’t arbitrary—they are deliberate safeguards against the chaos engulfing other parts of the world. But all of this has one objective: to prevent war. If Singapore ever has to send its sons and brothers to fight, it will mark the ultimate failure of our policies. Everything we do now— diplomatic maneuvering, military spending, economic discipline— is designed to avoid that outcome. It’s our only move, the ability to maintain something stable in a in a fractured, unstable world.
There is a saying that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme, and we are living through a dark refrain. The escalating instability in Europe and Middle East echoes the dangerous dynamics that preceded World War II. Civilian lives are becoming collateral damage in conflicts where the rules no longer seem to apply. And these conflicts might spread to us here in Singapore.
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