Shooting trial balloon in the sky: Chinese message and US response

It may just be a one-off affair, but the message is clear. China has told the US and the rest of the world that it has ‘arrived’ after all, with the ‘balloon incident’. This is possibly the first time after Pearl Harbour that a ‘state actor’ has ‘violated’ the US air-space and it did not require China a highly-sophisticated fighter-fleet to do it. Osama Bin-Laden’s 9/11 Al Qaeda attack required greater sophistication, planning and sharper execution, but it was a ‘non-state’ actor doing it, which could only be a one-off affair, by the very design, reach and out-reach. Yes, the US shooting down a Chinese spy-balloon in its air-space may also be a way Beijing is telling Washington that America is only at a ‘knocking distance’. Though China has promptly denied that it was a spy balloon, but, it has acknowledged it was Chinese. Possibly with not much of collectable debris, ‘deniability’ might have been an option but China also knows when it comes to homeland security, the Americans are paranoid beyond imagination. They would have gone to lengths, even if it took months and years, and involved billions of dollars, the Pentagon would have fixed responsibility. In a way, Beijing might have saved all those resources and efforts for the US with that one acknowledgement as otherwise no one is going to believe that it was a ‘weather balloon’ balloon that had gone astray. China has ‘regretted’ the incident, and has claimed that the innocent (?) balloon had transgressed owing to the westerlies, and drawn upon the diplomatic parlance ‘force majeure’, or ‘unforeseeable circumstances’, to describe the situation. Weather balloons, however much monitored and controlled from a land base, going astray cannot be described as ‘force majeure’, so very casually. Was it then written into the script that this would be the diplomatic line that China would be taking if caught in the act? Anyway, sooner than later, the American media would go beyond speculation by experts and veterans, get at the truth: if their weathermen had located or reported those ‘westerlies’ that China is talking about. It is still quite possible, even if not plausible, that it was a weather balloon that drifted away. In such a case, why did not Beijing tell Washington to expect an uninvited and unintended (?) aerial visitor before being caught. After all, Chinese technicians monitoring even a weather balloon would have known what was happening up there, and would have had the minimum common sense to send the message up the ranks as a ‘diplomatic incident’ was definitely on hand, even if not a military engagement, even if one-sided as happened. Spying at break-neck speed? Incidentally, this is the first major incident of Chinese spying after the ‘Yuan Wang-5’ episode involving a ‘spy ship’ in the Indian Ocean, not very long ago. It became an issue after it sought to berth at the China-controlled Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka. Neighbouring India’s concerns, though limited, were heeded only up to the point that Colombo put off the ship-visit by a few days, but it did berth at Hambantota, after all. The Chinese explanation at the time was that the ship was berthing only for re-stocking, and nothing more. Even if they had other intentions, the argument that they could spy on India from that satellite-monitoring vessel without coming anywhere near Sri Lanka or the shared waters of the Indian Ocean, had certain validity. Sri Lanka claimed that it had ensured that the ship did not engage in any activity other than declared, but the Indian hurt, naturally, rankled. Clearly, China is going at a break-neck speed to gather more and more information, obviously also of the strategic kind than it would like to acknowledge. As an aspiring super-power with not many influential backers in the comity of nations, it better do it that way. But then it should also be prepared for incidents of the balloon kind. To what use China intends putting the strategic data at its disposal just now is a big question for which even the Chinese may not have the answers. Maybe, in a tech-driven world, they believe also in the western maxim that data is god and collecting as much of it before it becomes too late, for possible use in times they could be deployed to their advantage. That way, Chinese technological superiority in the Asia region at least seems to owe it mostly to copycatting the West, mostly by ‘stealing’ or adopting similar methods. The latter is confined mostly to social sciences and international out-reach (barring in areas such as human rights, where even the other side holds only a dubious record, at best). So much so, some western analysts are already claiming that even the Chinese balloon experiment is only a repeat of what Americans revived some time ago, given certain inherent limitations, including costs and wider-area coverage, in satellite-spying. They have not acknowledged that this is possibly the first of state-sponsored threat of any kind against the US after the ‘Cuban missile crisis’, all the way back to 1962, or full 60 years back – in another world, another time, and viz another nation that is nowhere around now, namely, the Soviet Union. Diversion, tactics or not This is the second major episode of the kind involving the US and China, in the midst of global tensions that were already heightened by the ‘Ukraine War’. If one wanted to add the ‘Yuan Wang-5’ episode involving Sri Lanka, where the US also registered its protest with Colombo, given the proximity to the nation’s Diego Garcia military-base, then it could well be the third in a year of the Ukraine War, which commenced on 23 February last year. Between then and now, there was this heightened tension in Taiwan when the US dispatched then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, only to assert its right to do so. It took military proportions, but both sides behaved, as China has done now (at least thus far), hence no harm was done. Yet, for days together, at times running into weeks, Taiwan provided the much-required diversion from the global focus on Europe, centred in turn on the Ukraine War, after the world had learnt to absorb the post-Covid shocks that the unanticipated Russo-Ukraine military engagement, in doses and stages. This does not mean that the US and China conspired to do it that way, to grab global attention back to themselves and away from the European theatre. The world, especially through the colonial era, had got used to Europe and European wars dominating much of contemporary history. It went on till the end of the Second World War and the consequent emergence of the US as a demonstrated global power. In a way, the West created the Soviet Union as a demon, but it ended up as a whimper when the balloon burst despite their sustained efforts at pumping it up. If in the process, the American and European defence industry complexes also helped steady their economies, so be it. After all, Germany, France and the UK have had their own industrial-military complexes for long, and they fed and also fed on intra-European wars that they took to their colonies, spread across the world. Maybe, if the balloon had not ‘drifted’, and the US had sought to intercept it for the same reasons that they shot it down, then China possibly might have talked about ‘freedom of navigation’ in the skies as the rest of the world, including India, has been lecturing Beijing on a ‘rules-based, freedom of navigation’ in the seas. Or, have we stopped hearing all of it on the balloon episode, or is China having any reserves of the kind to tell the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, when he makes the now-postponed visit to Beijing, in person (not cancelled, according to Americans). Anyway, both American and Canadian sources have since talked about a ‘second balloon’ looming around the Latin American air-space though it has stopped with sketchy first reports. Was it just a hot balloon or is there more to it? That could determine the Chinese reach, as its out-reach in the matter is limited unlike that of the US? After all, the Ukraine War has revived the talk about the continued relevance of NATO despite limited Russian protestations, and also new alignments like the Quad and ASUS, not to mention what is turning out to be the civilian-based Indo-Pacific, with their so-called western allies (!) having their own Indo-Pacific policies and strategies as the US did not consult them or involve them. But then, there is the US signing a military agreement with the Philippines, as one more of its security establishments, ‘encircling’ China. Beijing does not have such luxury of such terrestrial proximity, not until it is able to set up bases around the US mainland, among others, other than Guam, where every other nation too has a piece of real-estate to call its own base. After all, possible Chinese intention and efforts at creating a ‘String of Pearls’ around India has met at best with limited success as host nations took Chinese money to build infrastructure, but are seemingly unwilling to convert their ‘territory’ in their possession into a full-fledged military establishment, now or ever. The writer is a Chennai-based policy analyst and political commentator. Views are personal.  Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .