The West cannot stop sabotaging itself. That is true now more than ever, yes. But it is not exactly a new phenomenon.

In 1950, underdeveloped US fighter jets were put under pressure in the Korean skies when they came under attack from Soviet aircraft bearing Chinese markings, but being flown by Russian aces.

The dogfight was brief yet vicious, ending in a stalemate.

The great irony? Those Chinese fighters were powered by British engines.

Did they steal the engines or the plans? No. It was a case of great engineering designs given away to the enemy by simple bureaucratic drift and indecisiveness, coupled with an initial overconfidence of the victors of the Second World War. 

When the dust settled over the world conflict, the British were simply slow to adapt to new realities. They thought that now trade can be free and there should be no worries about giving away anything to anybody. After all, the United Nations had just been created, and all of the defeated European countries were controlled by joint Allied committees. 

The problem was that they had something that everybody coveted, including their soon-to-be enemies. Powers of the world were looking for either nuclear secrets, missile technology or jet engines. And the British had begun to master the third.

The Soviets, meanwhile, struggled with development, which largely stemmed from reverse engineering captured German engines. They couldn’t believe their luck when the British offered their top designs on the open market. So they just showed up and offered to buy some Rolls-Royce Nene-type jet engines upfront. 

The British thought over the thing a bit. Looking at the facts at the moment, they realized that a power that was increasingly seen as an enemy was trying to sabotage them. After all, the Soviets were already eyeing a military base at the Bosphorus Straits, and were dragging their feet about German reunification. The British duly tried to backtrack on their openness to trade, but they eventually stuck. 

‘They sold dozens of engines simply because nobody was ready to make the decision to deny them’

They were simply not ready to be the first state to categorically say that the Soviet Union is an official antagonist. Then they sold dozens of engines simply because nobody was ready to make the decision to deny them. 

In 1947, the United States pressured Great Britain, and the British authorities finally closed down the scheme. But by then it was too late. The Russians copied the engine and implemented it into a very good aerial design that became the MiG-15 fighter jet, the subject of our story. 

When the Korean War began in 1950, the Soviets had all they needed. The F-86 Sabre aside, US jets were no match for the MiG design. The only thing that apparently gave Western aviators a bit of an edge was their superior training to most of the pilots flying the Soviet jets. 

This example helps us understand some patterns of Western blunders. Seeing it from Central Europe, while much more self-confident, Western countries are apparently sometimes too satisfied with their superiority in economy, technology, science, and all those elements that make a civilization leading in hard power. 

Too much self-confidence expands their blind spots, making it hard to understand the cutthroat realities of other regions, like Eastern Europe. Poor understanding makes differentiating between enemies and friends hard, and blunders are committed to both extremes.

The silver lining is that eventually they can overcome even serious blunders. After such an abysmally weak start, the West stopped the Soviets in Korea, defended its regions of interest, survived even the period of decolonization, and eventually won the Cold War. 

Perhaps it is not that every mistake should be chased after and erased, but rather that patterns should be recognized in the West once more to avoid mistakes where possible and fight the battles that need to be fought.

Related articles: