A balloon should not pop diplomacy

The Chinese balloon reminds me that I am among the few who have witnessed a balloon launch. It was in Sicily in the late 1970s. The Italians and Americans were launching a balloon to study the ozone layer. I was science counselor of the US Embassy in Rome. Why not enjoy a day or two in Sicily talking with scientists?

Uneventful

The launch itself was uneventful. With the helium bubble at the top of the balloon, it measured something like 100 meters high. It would round out into a ball only as the atmospheric pressure lessened with altitude. The launch sounded like the soft fluttering of a small flock of birds. It was nothing like the launch I attended several years later in Natal, Brazil of a US Air Force rocket with a similar purpose. Then we weren’t much more than 100 meters from a very noisy launch that seemed to fire the missile directly over our heads.

The Italian balloon lacked navigational capability. As it approached the Eastern Seaboard, the Americans decided it presented a threat to commercial aviation, so they asked the Italians to destroy it. That they did. Could the Chinese have destroyed the balloon had the Americans asked them to do it? Certainly the Chinese should have that capability, if only to prevent the balloon from interfering with one of their own aircraft. But they apparently did not.

What are the Chinese up to?

The Chinese unquestionably have better means of observing the US than a balloon. Their satellites may not be as good as ours, but they needn’t be to gather lots of information. I suppose the lower cost of a balloon may have appealed to someone in the bowels of the Chinese bureaucracy. The ready and apologetic acknowledgement on China’s part suggests it was not an intentional provocation.

If the Chinese were seeking to provoke the Americans, they have succeeded. Republicans in Congress are criticizing Biden for not shooting it down right away and also for postponing Secretary of State Blinken’s trip to Beijing. Of course they would also have criticized him if he hadn’t postponed the trip or if he had shot down the balloon.

What are the Americans up to?

President Biden decided to let the balloon proceed on its merry way to the East Coast. The alternative was to try to shoot it down. But if it was in fact flying at >90,000 feet over Montana, that may not have been easily doable. The Administration has cited concern about the remnants falling to the ground, but the missile would also fall. Its fragments could cause more damage than the balloon and its payload.

My guess is the Americans are exploiting the balloon’s progress to gather intelligence. Both the balloon’s data gathering and its operation likely present opportunities. It is not a bad idea to make sure we know what the Chinese are targeting and how they do it. This isn’t likely their first balloon. Nor is it likely their last.

The Americans shot the balloon down once it could be expected to fall in the Atlantic Ocean. Falling debris would then not be an issue. The Americns will try to recover the balloon and its especially its instruments. That would provide answers to a lot of questions.

Mutual surveillance

David Frum argues in The Atlantic that mutual surveillance is a good thing and ought to be encouraged, as it was once upon a time with Russia. An Open Skies agreement with China today is unlikely. Domestic politics in both the US and China would preclude it under current circumstances. But the Chinese are unlikely to have gained enough intelligence from this balloon to compensate for the embarrassment they have caused themselves. So net, US gains, so long as it is able to contain the domestic criticism and proceed in due course with Blinken’s visit to Beijing. A balloon should not pop diplomacy.