Secretary of State Blinken postpones Xi meeting over China’s spy balloon

If you want to know how US-China relations are going, consider this: balloons just ruined diplomatic summits.

Okay, not just any balloon – a surveillance balloon that belongs to the People’s Republic of China, and is currently flying in US airspace. His presence has prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a planned meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping indefinitely.

The Chinese government has confirmed the balloon is theirs, although it claims it is “mainly civilian” and studying the weather. The wind, China says, blew the balloon away, just like it does with balloons, except, this must have been a very specific wind that happened to carry the balloon over some “sensitive site,” as the Pentagon put it. . Specifically, the balloon was found in Montana, which is home to one of three nuclear missile silo fields. The Pentagon also said the balloon was “maneuverable.”

That is why the US apparently rejected China’s innocent explanation and called the presence of balloons in US airspace “a clear violation of our sovereignty, as well as international law, and it is unacceptable that this happened.”

The US also rejected the highly anticipated meeting between Blinken and Xi in Beijing, a sign of how fragile relations between Beijing and Washington are today. There have been spy balloons before, and there are other stealthy methods of surveillance and spying – which everyone, including the US, has done. But this slow decline has frustrated even the most basic efforts at dialogue. Add to that the US political jockeying for the Biden administration’s China policy, and of course, this bubble will burst.

Spy balloons are still hanging around the US, but that’s not something you should worry about

Today, the balloon is still in the United States at an altitude of about 60,000 feet. (For reference, planes fly at about 35,000 feet.) The surveillance equipment is only about the size of two to three school buses, officials said, with a larger balloon section. Pentagon officials said on Friday it was “somewhere in the middle” of the country, heading east, and expected for several more days.

The Pentagon said it was not a military or physical threat, and a senior defense official said in a briefing Thursday that, based on what the US could tell, it “doesn’t add significant value over what the PRC can do to assemble things like satellites in Earth Orbit.” Less” – meaning, Beijing doesn’t get the good stuff. The U.S. is still taking additional measures to lock down information, but says it cannot be shot down because of debris that could cause more damage than the balloon itself.

But the firm response of the US, and the possible obfuscation of China, shows how unstable this relationship is. Neither Washington nor Beijing have a clear understanding of how to communicate or deconflict, and they don’t even have many channels to practice regularly. Such ambiguity makes miscalculation or escalation more likely. As China seeks to build its power abroad, and the US seeks to contain or contain it, the possibility of close calls or misunderstandings will build. And not every miscommunication can be low stakes. It was a slow-moving balloon, after all, not, say, a near-collision of a military plane.

This was supposed to help Blinken get to Beijing. The visit was intended to stabilize relations and build November The summit between Biden and Xi in Bali at least gives hope that the two powers want to find a way to engage. A senior state department official said in a briefing on Friday that he did not have a timeline for rescheduling Blinken’s trip, but the US felt that if Blinken went to Beijing now, “it would accelerate the agenda that we will be able to deal with.” In other words, he’s just talking about spy balloons, like everyone else.

The polarized US domestic climate also complicates this. Biden, like his predecessor Donald Trump, has maintained a fairly hawkish policy on China, including maintaining Trump’s tariffs; curbing the sale of semiconductor technology and asking allies and partners to do the same; and continue to go back to Taiwan.

However, Republicans, in particular, have accused the Biden administration of not being tough enough on China. Many leaders considered the balloon incident to be an example of administration failure. “China’s disregard for US sovereignty is a destabilizing act that must be addressed, and President Biden cannot afford to remain silent,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted.

The growing hawkishness towards China is troubling US reality and foreign policy responses. As long as the U.S. sees China as a threat — and a direct threat to the United States — then a cheap-looking spy balloon could turn into a national security crisis. There are legitimate security concerns about China’s surveillance tactics, and what it does with the information it collects — but honestly, the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t need balloons, just your cell phone.

There is nothing good about easing tensions between the US and China, and this incident shows that, right now, Washington and Beijing are fighting hard to keep these tensions predictable and manageable.