President Joe Biden said he wanted to destroy an alleged Chinese spy balloon as soon as he learned about it, but the week-long delay before it was finally shot down may actually work in his favor.
(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden said he wanted to destroy an alleged Chinese spy balloon as soon as he learned about it, but the week-long delay before it was finally shot down may actually work in his favor.
“I told them to shoot it down,” he told reporters on Saturday, referring to his top generals. “They said to me, ‘Let’s wait till the safest place to do it.’”
When the balloon was just off the coast of South Carolina, and no longer a danger to anyone below, the order came. A single F-22 fighter flew up to 58,000 feet (18,000 meters) and fired an Aim-9X Sidewinder missile, whose white contrails were visible against a stark blue sky to those still on shore. The balloon popped and the equipment it was carrying came tumbling down.
It may have been one of the most awkwardly timed and geopolitically charged espionage episodes in recent intelligence-gathering history. But it was also an opportunity: the Biden administration says it will get important new data on Chinese capabilities by studying the balloon, and showed off the military’s own prowess with the shootdown and expected recovery of the object’s payload.
More broadly, Biden may have gained a bit more diplomatic leverage in the ever-shifting geopolitical tussle with China, which has for years tried to portray Washington as a destabilizing force in international affairs. Despite its protests that the balloon was a civilian craft, China came off as a provocateur.
Officials also pointed to a second Chinese balloon spotted in Latin America that defense officials said was also conducting espionage activities. They framed the two episodes as part of an increasingly brazen espionage campaign that’s ignored other nations’ borders.
“China is trying to improve its image with the world and to stabilize ties with the US,” said Taylor Fravel, an expert on China’s military at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “This clearly does not help, especially as it includes a violation of sovereign US airspace.”
Over the course of the week, the balloon most significantly derailed the first visit by a Secretary of State to China in five years. Top diplomat Antony Blinken postponed his trip over what he told China’s top foreign policy official was an “unacceptable and irresponsible” act of spying.
But that trip wasn’t expected to yield much in the first place, US officials said at the time, so there is little hand-wringing about its delay. And China analysts have suggested Beijing wanted the visit more than the US did, given its slowing domestic economy and efforts to emerge from its Covid Zero lockdown.
The US has already used the Chinese balloon to bolster military and intelligence ties with its close allies, and said it briefed partners on the issue. The Pentagon praised Canadian counterparts for tracking the balloon over North American airspace, while South Korea’s foreign minister, speaking at a briefing alongside Blinken on Friday, demanded China explain itself.
Even though millions were aware of the Chinese spy balloon drifting high above the US, Biden still didn’t give Beijing any advance notice before the US aircraft brought it down, according to people familiar with the situation.
China responded to the decision to shoot down the balloon with outrage, saying the US violated international norms by targeting what it said was a meteorological balloon that blew off course.
One senior administration official said the US remained confident that it was a spy balloon, in part because it traveled over sensitive military sites and carried surveillance equipment not usually associated with standard meteorological activities. It also had a small motor and propellers, indicating that Chinese spies could maneuver the object.
While US officials had told Chinese counterparts downing the balloon was an option, the refusal to communicate with China before the missile strike underscored a new depth of distrust between the two sides — which have kept military-to-military communication open to avoid miscalculations that could lead to war.
‘Weakness and Hand-Wringing’
Biden’s decision to wait and shoot down the balloon after several days drew a barrage of criticism from Republicans that his administration was weak on China, and should have gotten rid of it immediately — or at least before it drifted over Montana, a state that houses a large portion of the US’s Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, blasted Biden for “coddling and appeasing the Chinese communists” and that China’s provocations were being met with “weakness and hand-wringing.”
The administration sought to silence its critics with the way events unfolded.
US military and intelligence agencies will now get their hands on a sophisticated piece of their chief geopolitical competitor’s spying equipment. The operation to retrieve the debris with intelligence value is now underway, a Pentagon official told reporters on Saturday, adding the US believes the balloon had a broad array of intelligence gathering abilities.
It’s not certain whether the US and China are on the cusp of another tit-for-tat round of retaliatory measures that risk spiraling out of control. Last summer, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to self-ruled Taiwan prompted Beijing to launch fierce military exercises around the island, and sent US-China relations into a nosedive.
But some hold out hope for the secretary of state’s trip, whenever it does occur. His visit was originally announced after Biden met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping late last year and pledged to put ties on a more stable footing despite fierce competition.
“What’s important to note is that Secretary Blinken had the option of canceling the visit and he did not,” said Bonny Lin, a former China adviser to the Defense Department who is now senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “He chose to postpone, which indicates willingness on the US end to maintain open channels of communication.”
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