Secretary of State Antony Blinken was already packing his bags for his trip to Beijing, on a peace mission, when the balloon incident ruined his plan. And, with it, the last expectations of détente between the two powers.
An observation airship apparently launched by China had been flying over the United States for a few days, including territories in the state of Montana where the Pentagon has one of its three nuclear missile silo fields. The Department of Defense, which reported the finding on Thursday, raised with Joe Biden the possible downing of the device. But the president and his team gave up due to the risks that this implied for people on the ground.
Xi Jinping’s government acknowledged yesterday that the balloon was his, but assured that it was “a civil airship used for research purposes, mainly meteorological.” And he said he was “regretting” the deviation of the device due to “the wind” and the limited “self-direction capacity” of the device.
Washington replied that it took note of China’s explanations and signs of “repentance”, but that it is “a clear violation of our sovereignty and international law.” And he sentenced: “It is unacceptable that this has happened.”
According to government sources, the balloon reached North America through the Aleutian Islands, in the north of the Pacific; it passed through Canadian airspace, and on Tuesday or Wednesday it entered that of the United States. At no time did he pose a threat, Canadian and US authorities stressed.
Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder said yesterday that the airship had moved toward the center of the continent and was flying at an altitude of 60,000 feet, that is, more than 18,000 meters. US air surveillance systems were keeping an eye on him; Which isn’t that hard either because even though he flies high, he’s about the size of three buses.
Size and height aside, the appearance of the balloon quickly caused a diplomatic crisis. Blinken was going to meet in Beijing on Sunday and Monday with his Chinese counterpart, Qin Gang, to continue the talks that leaders Joe Biden and Xi Jinping held in November within the G-20 summit in Bali ; a meeting that resulted in an agreement to “keep the lines of communication open” at a time of growing confrontation.
The Secretary of State chose to “postpone” his trip, the first by a senior US dignitary to China in five years. Through officials from his department who spoke to ABC, Blinken said he did not want to exaggerate the situation with a definitive “cancellation” of his visit but also did not want the balloon incident to dominate his meetings with the Chinese leaders.
In any case, the balloon incident and Washington’s reaction illustrate what, beyond the detente gestures, is already a bilateral confrontation with traces of a true cold war.
In fact, the Pentagon reported the detection of the balloon a few hours after its chief and US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, announced in Manila a pact for the US power to access four “strategic” military bases in the Philippines. : an agreement aimed at strengthening the defenses of the two countries in the face of China’s advances in the region. Neither Austin nor his Filipino counterpart, Carlito Galvez, revealed the location of the bases.
The agreement expands and improves the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Pact (EDCA), signed in 2014 by both nations and which already allowed the US military to use five bases in the archipelago. The extension of the EDCA came to be signed weeks after Washington announced that as of 2024 it will relocate some 4,000 Marines currently installed in US bases in Okinawa, Japan to a facility on the island of Guam.
Both this operation in the US territory of Guam and the positioning in the Philippine bases are part of a broader plan to disperse US forces in the Pacific with a view to better preparing them against China in the event of a crisis. The US intelligence services fear above all that Xi Jinping’s armed forces will end up invading Taiwan. CIA chief William Burns went so far as to say in December that Beijing “is already preparing for a war” to take over the island of Formosa.
Added to the friction and military movements in the Pacific is a worsening of the trade war between the two powers, in which Washington’s efforts to restrict its own and foreign exports of components to manufacture microchips to China have recently stood out. The concern of the Biden Administration about possible direct or indirect aid from Beijing to Moscow in the invasion of Ukraine is also clear, and the US denunciations of China’s constant attacks against human rights do not cease.
As if that were not enough, the Republican-dominated House of Representatives has just created a committee to study how to combat Chinese competition.
Blinken intended to go to China to proclaim peace, at least on paper. But, once again, the détente flies through the air.
