The sordid drama continues. The investigation into the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash hasn't reached anywhere, at least officially, even a month after it blew up into pieces. The Western powers, led by the United States, have intensified their diatribe against Russia. The G7 has imposed fresh sanctions on Moscow, condemning "Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea, and actions to destabilize eastern Ukraine" because those actions "are unacceptable and violate international law". The G7, comprising the US, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan, has demanded "a prompt, full, unimpeded and transparent international investigation" into the downing of MH17 and called "upon all sides to establish, maintain and fully respect a cease-fire at and around the crash site ... so that the investigators can take up their work ..."

Indeed, a cease-fire was declared after the downing of MH17 and the rebels fighting Ukrainian forces granted access to international investigators to the crash site in Donetsk. The rebels even handed the two black boxes of the plane to the investigators.

Still the G7 said on July 30 that it wanted a "prompt" investigation. In doing so, it conveniently ignored the fact that the government in Kiev, supported by the US and the European Union, has escalated military operations in the region and that the military operations blocked access to the crash site from July 27 to 30.

Have any of the Western powers asked the Kiev government why it blocked the crash site for four days? The answer is obvious. A journalist from The New York Times, reporting from the crash site, told an interviewer that the rebels didn't create any barriers when they controlled the site and the blockage was started by the Ukrainian forces. Has the West asked the Kiev government, which it supports, whether its forces were destroying evidence during the four days? No, because it had a much better job at hand: to condemn Russia and impose new sanctions on it.

The game the US is playing by gathering its obvious allies is to confuse the international community and isolate Russia. The Cold War may be over, not the Cold War mentality. For decades, since World War II, the US has relied on chaos to maintain its stranglehold on the world. And chaos does reign everywhere - in the Middle East, in Africa, in Asia, in the markets, on the bourses and the Internet, in surveillance networks and international organizations. It's a perfect setting for the US to thrive. And thrive it does. If the US administration is not helping strike deals to feed the ever-hungry American big business, then it's imposing sanctions - on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Iran one day, Russia on the other, and waiting for a chance to do so on China.

And what do the corporations give the US administration in return? Let's hear it from US President Barack Obama: "Our corporations are ingrates after all we have done for them ... They flee from our taxes while we subsidize their operations!"

There is nothing surprising in all this, except that an overwhelming majority of Americans, innocent as they are, have been made to believe that whatever their government does to the rest of the world is justified. They have never wondered why there is no change in US foreign policy despite a change in the government, from Republicans to Democrats, and vice-versa. They have been made to believe that loving the country and loving the government are the same thing.

Until the majority of Americans realize that they can love their country and oppose their government at the same time and there is nothing ethically wrong in this, and force the US administration to stop treating the world as its playground, we will see more chaos in Asia and Africa, a more chaotic Middle East, and more Iraqs, Afghanistans and Ukraines - and investigations into disasters like the downing of the MH17 can go to ....

The author is a senior editor with China Daily.

oprana@hotmail.com.

(China Daily 08/19/2014 page9)