"Mayday Mayday" - National Disasters Take International Flight: Foreign Policy Analysis of the Netherlands After Two Aviation Incidents: El Al Flight 1862 and Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

Abstract

The impact of the crash in Eastern Ukraine of a commercial airliner was felt deeply in Dutch society: 196 citizens lost their lives. Twenty-two years prior, another crash had shook the country when a cargo plane crashed into a high-density residential area of the nation’s capital. This thesis conducts a historical comparative case study of the crash of El Al Flight 1862 in the Amsterdam area of the Bijlmermeer and the crash of Malaysia Airlines 17 in Eastern Ukraine, to examine on the one hand to what extent the pre-existing interstate relationship was of influence to the handling of the crash, and on the other hand to what extent the crash influenced the subsequent interstate relationship between the Netherlands and the involved foreign state. Using an approach based on Foreign Policy Analysis combined with social constructivism, this study begins with a survey of the history of the interstate relationship of the Netherlands with respectively Israel and Russia. The initial response to, the diplomatic actions after, the process of truth finding and international context of both crashes are examined and compared. This study concludes that the pre-existing relationship was a large influence of the way political leaders responded to the crash, already apparent in the initial reaction and persistent in the years after the accidents. The interstate relationship is therefore a strong indicator of the response to a crash with involvement of a foreign state actor. Since the crash itself was of minimal impact to the subsequent relationship in both cases, it can be concluded that the pre-existing relationship (and economic interests) is persistent through an impactful event. Due to the high societal impact of both these cases, an interesting aspect for future research would be the influence of public opinion on the actions of the political leaders.