On the heels of their unending trade and technology wars of several years, the recent simmering controversy about a US Air Force F-22 fighter aircraft shooting down a Chinese high-altitude balloon off the coast of South Carolina on February 4 has become more complicated.
This is because since then three more flying objects have been identified as threats and shot down – one each on Friday, Saturday and Sunday – over Alaska and Idaho in the United States and over Lake Huron in southern Ontario, Canada.
What is especially intriguing is that compared with the the preliminary analysis of the US teams investigating the debris of the first balloon linking it to “a surveillance program” run by China’s People’s Liberation Army and accusing it of being used to gather intelligence on US military installations, comments from Beijing began by seeking to play it down, asking US to handle the balloon incident in a calm, professional and restrained manner.
Indeed on February 5, China sought to placate the US by firing the chief of the China Meteorological Administration, Zhuang Guotai, but at same time called the US shooting down its weather balloon “clearly an overreaction that seriously violates international practice.”
China claims it was an innocent weather research balloon and Washington should not make any fuss about it. However, the bipartisan unity of American anger was exemplified in the February 9 resolution in the House of Representatives condemning China that was passed by an unprecedented vote of 419-0.
Meanwhile, diplomatic channels stand suspended. Requests from US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to speak to his Chinese counterpart, Defense Minister Wei Fenghe, to explain to him the US position has been rebuffed. The long-pending visit of Secretary of State Antony Blinken was postponed indefinitely at very last minute.
Such inordinate acrimony over what could have been resolved over a phone call reveals deep underlying anxieties on both sides that could further derail their already complicated relations.
Ballooning controversy
The fact is that since the incident of February 4, something that could have died down as a one-off event, a spate of other flying objects have been discovered and identified as threats, and four of these have been shot down by the USAF, pushing the needle of suspicion further toward Beijing.
Inflating the controversy is the change in Beijing’s response that has seen Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesmen going on an offensive, accusing the US of flying similar balloons over Chinese airspace 10 times in the last 12 months.
Beijing wishes to portray these balloons as routine parts of their weather research. Also, this is how China seeks to explain why it did not bother to informing the US or Canada when its so-called weather research balloon went adrift and was flying over North American airspace for a week before it was shot down. But Beijing’s silence even after this balloon had hit global media headlines remains intriguing.
And now, adding fuel to fire, China has accused the US of 657 air surveillance sorties last year and 64 similar flights last month over the South China Sea, which it regards as its sovereign territory, though its claims are seriously contested.
The United States clearly does not recognize Beijing’s claims over the South China Sea and has been at the forefront campaigning to ensure freedom of aviation and navigation over the airspace and in the sea lanes of that body of water.
On Monday, the White House also chose to further expand the remit of this ballooning controversy by accusing China of violating sovereignty of not just the United States but of more than 40 other nations across five continents.
Other nations as of now have remained restrained. Even Canada has chosen to stay mute. On being asked a straight question, Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand said it was “far too early” to say that an “unidentified object” shot down on Saturday over southern Ontario was from China.
The controversy therefore is not likely to expand beyond the US-China precipice, and possibly China has its own friends as well. Last week, another Chinese balloon reportedly flew over three Latin American countries – Costa Rica, Colombia and Venezuela – and there has been complete silence from all sides, not just from China but also from both the ruling and opposition parties in these countries.
Balloon bombs
This however does not mean that anger in the US can be called completely misplaced. The US has to keep in mind the fact that emerging China is its most serious strategic challenge. Also, China indulging in intellectual-property theft and surveillance has been a constant refrain from the United States. The specter of September 11, 2001, remains very fresh in American minds.
Also, recent decades have witnessed a complete transformation in tools and techniques of war-fighting involving unthinkable instruments and elements. For instance, the idea of balloons and even of balloon bombs has been around for centuries.
The oldest known use of balloons in war was recorded in China, where the use of lanterns as signaling devices was popularized by the famous Zhuge Liang way back in the 3rd century. Even today China’s annual Lantern Festival still celebrates his contributions.
In Europe, the Montgolfier brothers perfected balloon flights during 1782-84 using silk or cotton stretched over wooden frames, introducing the feasibility of semi-controlled flight. Being a latest technology of those times, silk balloons were used during the French Revolution of 1789, though Napoleon Bonaparte did not think too highly of these and disbanded his balloon brigade in 1799.
Half a century later they were revived in Italy, which from early modern times had come to be the leader in defensive fortifications making them impregnable against time-tested siege strategies in war-fighting. At the siege of Venice of 1848-49, Austrian Lieutenant Franz von Uchatius was the first to develop hot-air balloon bombs, though they proved ineffective, being dependent on wind direction and often going adrift toward his own forces.
In America, from the 1860s, the Union forces were very invested in balloons and successfully used them as instruments of war for locating and attacking Confederate positions. During World War II, between 1942 and 1944, the British dispatched nearly 100,000 balloon bombs to Germany to maximize the war cost for the Nazis.
The Japanese started experimenting with balloon bombs even earlier, in 1933. Their balloon program was revived in 1943 and about 9,300 Fu-Go balloon bombs were launched, of which 385 actually landed in the US. Another set of 200 balloon bombs from Japanese submarines were deployed off the American coasts.
Indeed, experts have called balloon bombs the first successful intercontinental weapons. While the US suffered more than 400,000 casualties during World War II, it lost only six people on the continental US; this was caused by a Japanese balloon bomb that killed a family of six on May 5, 1945, in rural Oregon.
Is the US overreacting?
The question is whether President Joe Biden’s administration is overreacting to unite the nation as it moves closer to presidential elections. Has its political campaign and especially its frequent use of advanced missiles to shoot down small unidentified flying objects been disproportionate, as suggested by Beijing? Should not the US come out with hard evidence on its assessment of these flying objects being identified as threats and whether its use of force was not excessive?
What message do these actions send to other countries that may also see their airspace infringed on by similar flying objects? Canberra is now seeking urgent clarifications on whether the US can provide any details on whether Australia was among the 40 countries over which the US says China has been flying similar balloons.
The United States has denied Chinese claims that American balloons often fly over Chinese airspace and has slapped sanctions on six Chinese entities suspected of supporting Beijing’s balloon program. Would the US expect all its friends and allies likewise to sanction these companies?
As anger unites Americans of all hues, the mystery remains; press briefings have been full of “we don’t know” and “it’s not in our domain” responses, weakening the case of justifying American accusations of these objects posing a national-security threat. This is not very reassuring for the friends and allies of the United States.
With the world’s most advanced military and intelligence machine at its disposal – supported by a defense budget larger than the next 10 largest spenders combined – the world surely expects more definite expositions from the United States and possibly an early end to such disconcerting episodes.
As the world’s second-largest economy and second-largest defense spender, China is no less responsible for ensuring efforts to bury the hatchet at the earliest and let the world focus on real challenges.
The two nations must get their act together lest other nations begin to ignore them and begin to seek their own solutions to their problems.
Follow Swaran Singh on Twitter @SwaranSinghJNU.