Balloons, strategic spying and hot air

The Chinese balloon incident over the United States of America has provided welcome amusement bordering on diversionary strategic relief.

As the first anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine war approaches, it is clear that the conflict has taken a heavy toll on conventional diplomacy. In the 12-month cycle of tension-fraught diplomacy since the start of the war, devoid of anecdotes perennially associated with foreign policy and a total lack of the lighter side of statecraft, the Chinese balloon incident over the United States of America has provided welcome amusement bordering on diversionary strategic relief.

Unintentionally, perhaps, Patrick Cronin, Asia-Pacific Security Chair at the conservative Washington think-tank, the Hudson Institute, remarked after the Joe Biden administration shot down the intrusive flying object that “China’s wispy denials of responsibility for the surveillance balloon are full of hot air.” Several US newspapers carried the wacky headline about the inevitability which awaited the balloon once it arrived stateside: “What Goes Up Must Come Down!”

Manufactured Crisis

The sequence of events in Sino-US relations as the incident unfurled over North American skies was curiously farcical and offered an amusing change from the sabre-rattling which characterised all of 2022. Until the mysterious balloon ballooned into what appears to be a ‘manufactured’ crisis in bilateral relations between Washington and Beijing, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was all set to make a two-day visit to China. But abruptly, on February 3, a day before the airship was shot down, the Joe Biden administration called off Blinken’s visit. Hours before the visit was put off, the US Secretary of State and the highest-ranking diplomat in the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy, former Foreign Minister Wang Yi, talked on the phone. They agreed, like mature and seasoned diplomats, on the “need to stay their course in maintaining timely communication, avoiding misjudgement and managing differences in the face of a chance occurrence,” according to an official readout of the phone conversation.

The readout was logical, especially the reference therein to “a chance occurrence,” because it strains credulity to assume in this age of high technology that any modern country would use balloons for strategic spying on rivals. China has eyes in the sky, state-of-the-art satellites, just like the ones the US owns, to spy on any rival. Why would they then use balloons, which they cannot even control from home, across continents? Besides, the Chinese balloon did not appear overnight over the Western hemisphere. It is an open secret in Washington that the US Air Force has been tracking the balloon in question for days and regularly updating their assessment of the flying object.

Being Alarmist

What then caused the White House to abruptly change course, shoot down the balloon after the Chinese were contrite over the incident, call off high-level bilateral talks and plunge ties with Beijing into free fall? By all accounts, the plot is still unfolding in Washington. On February 8, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg arrived in Washington for meetings with the Joe Biden administration. He went to Washington after visiting Japan and South Korea.

At a joint media appearance with Blinken after their talks, Stoltenberg gave a chilling assessment of his East Asia visit. “Beijing is watching closely and learning lessons that may influence its future decisions,” Stoltenberg said, referring to the course of the war in Ukraine. “What happens in Europe today could happen in Asia tomorrow. China is substantially building up its military forces, including nuclear weapons without any transparency.  It is attempting to assert control over the South China Sea and threatening Taiwan, trying to take control of critical infrastructure and deepening its strategic partnership with Moscow. So, NATO allies had real concerns which we discussed today. Those close partners of NATO very much highlighted the importance of strengthening the cooperation between NATO and our partners in the Indo-Pacific to address the challenges that China poses.”

During Blinken’s joint press conference with Stoltenberg, the top US diplomat had some tough words for China. “China engaged in this irresponsible action, a violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity and international law.” It was a far cry from the atmospherics during his telephone conversation with Wang. The strategy of Western powers appears to have shifted from constructive dialogue with China to finding an opening for NATO in the Indo-Pacific. This was Stoltenberg’s first structured, agenda-guided visit to the region in the eight years that he has been at the head of the Brussels-based military alliance. India must be watchful and needs to pay close attention to the change in the West’s approach to the Indo-Pacific. New Delhi has much at stake.

A sidelight to the swirling speculations in Washington is that identifying the balloon’s Chinese origin until it was too close to US territory was an intelligence failure in Langley, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This appears to have led to contretemps within the US intelligence community and led to a hasty, flat-footed change in approach towards Beijing, evidence of which was the postponement of Blinken’s China visit at the eleventh hour. Given the CIA’s record, it is plausible: among its glaring intelligence failures was the inability to detect India’s plans to conduct the Pokhran II nuclear tests in May 1998. Of more serious consequence was the failure to warn the White House about Japan’s World War II attack on Pearl Harbour despite being tipped off.

KP Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.