Inside Out

Montana balloon farce must not derail efforts to repair fraught US-China relationship

The furore over the balloon is a diplomatic disaster for China and a boon to US hawks at a time when the world needs the two sides to repair relations

It would be tragic if the incident prevented the start of a better-tempered discussion that hauls China and the US back from unnecessary conflict

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A high-altitude balloon floats over Billings, Montana, on February 1. The discovery of a Chinese balloon flying over the continental US has spurred a flurry of condemnations and the postponement of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Beijing. Photo: AP

David Dodwell is CEO of the trade policy and international relations consultancy Strategic Access, focused on developments and challenges facing the Asia-Pacific over the past four decades.

Published: 1:00am, 6 Feb 2023

There are moments when tragedy descends into farce, then spirals further down into even deeper tragedy. The pandemonium that has erupted over a Chinese balloon drifting slowly across the middle of the United States must count as one of them.

In prompting the suspension of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s visit to Beijing – the first such high-level visit to China in five years – a week of much-needed fence-mending has been wrecked. It was replaced by an outpouring of outrage as Republicans vie with Democrats to show who can be the most hawkish on China.

There was an eerie prescience in an article on Saturday by Bates Gill and Evan Medeiros: “Without this progress [of Blinken’s visit], the relationship will veer into unbridled competition that raises the risk of accidents and even intentional conflict.”

In sum, it amounts to a diplomatic catastrophe for China, whether the balloon was spying over nuclear sites in Montana or it had been pushed off course by inclement jet-stream winds up in the stratosphere.

It is an absolute gift to the narrative of US hawks who depict China as an aggressively expansionist would-be superpower bent on forcing the US into war – probably over Taiwan – within the next two or three years.

We will probably never know whether it was a deliberate act of espionage gone wrong or a complete cock-up, but that hardly matters. History is littered with cock-ups with terrible consequences, right back to the 1914 assassination of Austria-Hungary’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which is credited with triggering World War I.