Bursting the Balloon — “State Capitalism” Farce That Empowered China
Time to get real — our national interests must supplant our business interests.
Prelude to a crisis.
Unaware that a Chinese spy balloon had been spotted over Alaska the previous day, Senators Mark Warner (D) and Marco Rubio (R) gave a joint interview January 29, 2023, on CBS’ Sunday show, “Face the Nation.” They discussed at length the great national security threat that China increasingly posed to the United States. Senator Marco lamented, “Capitalism didn’t change China, China changed capitalism.” He probably didn’t realize at the time that China was in the process of dramatically changing the overall rules of engagement as well.
While Liberal media downplayed the incident…
The Chinese balloon seems to have caused consternation in editorial boardrooms across most mainstream media outlets on both sides of the political spectrum, except for the New York Times and the Washington Post. The balloon was first detected over U.S. airspace high over Alaska, north of the Aleutian Islands, on January 28, 2023. It was shot down a week later February 4, 2023, off the South Carolina coast. During which time, the editorial pages of the nation’s two leading liberal newspapers appeared to downplay the incident. As Max Boot cautioned in his February 6, 2023 Washington Post column, “The frenzy over China’s spy balloon is dangerous and unwarranted:”
“A healthy concern about China’s growing power is warranted, but paranoia and alarmism are not.”
Then, on February 11, 2023, David Axe’s guest essay, “Does China Have a Spy Balloon Strategy?” appeared in the editorial pages of the Gray Lady. Mr. Axe seemed to think that China’s authoritarian regime needed to do “two things to remain in power: project strength abroad while projecting that strength at home.” So, in Mr. Axe’s thinking, China’s “trial balloon” was as much directed at its own people, as it was at the United States. He concluded that it was “a subtle reminder to the people back home: Stay in line, lest we aim this weaponry at you.”
Even if that were true, why didn’t these liberal editorial boards recognize China’s blatant infringement into our airspace as a harbinger of things to come? Washington Post’s contributing columnist, Sebastian Mallaby, in his February 4, 2023 commentary, “China’s suspected spy balloon is the perfect symbol of its clumsiness” believed that China had generally been messing it up on the world stage in “the race for global respect and popularity.” In fact, Mr. Mallaby pointed out on the foreign policy front, “the Biden team has inflicted a series of humiliations on its chief rival.” He concluded, “The shooting down of China’s comic-book spy balloon extends China’s humiliation, and the Biden team deserves credit for pushing back against Xi and turning his aggression against him.”
… conservative media went apoplectic.
Meanwhile, on the conservative side, the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal was churning out a barrage of commentaries after the China balloon first showed up in Alaska.
In a seething February 5, 2023, opinion piece, “Biden and the Chinese Spy Balloon” the WSJ Editorial Board (EB) concluded, “The Biden Administration should be helping Americans understand that reality rather than patting itself on the back with mission-accomplished briefings.” That reality was — in the Board’s opinion — being touted by isolationists on both sides, “that we can be safe if we withdraw from engagement overseas.”
I reacted to this shoot-from-the-hip analysis by the EB, through the WSJ online comments section, as follows:
“Even given its deep anti-Biden bias, I haven’t read a more naïve commentary from the EB. It must not have heard of anti-jamming techniques, which our elite NORAD specialists would surely have deployed to ensure that our sensitive military and non-military installations on the ground weren’t compromised. In fact, NORAD might also have captured the transmissions between the Chinese balloon and the satellite it was streaming them to. It’s also quite likely NORAD might have recommended that the balloon be allowed to traverse the entire length of the US from Pacific to Atlantic, to record when the Chinese balloon started and stopped its reconnaissance signaling to the mother ship. Now, I never have had any kind of secret clearance, so this is just my own intel analysis of the situation. The larger point is its time Republicans, including the EB, put country over party and stop making stupid allegations. Even if y’all hate President Biden and the Democratic party, you must believe that our military intel is smarter and did the right things here in the advice it provided to the president! Good God!”
A voice of reason.
The naïveté exhibited by the WSJ EB was even more confounding because only a couple days earlier on February 3, 2023, the paper had published a brilliant essay, “Challenging the U.S. Is a Historic Mistake” by Robert Kagan, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Using a historical context Mr. Kagan had cautioned China about its belligerence towards the U.S. Again, in response, I had commented on the WSJ online as follows:
“Robert Kagan’s comprehensive analysis of the China threat reminded me of a quote attributed to American philosopher, George Santayana, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” It remains to be seen whether China wants to learn from the history of the 20th century’s most determined hegemons, Germany and Japan, both of whom were destroyed by the U.S. and its allies during WWII.
Having said that, if China takes Taiwan by force, its regional hegemonic ambitions will suffer a severe setback. For instance, its claim to the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, as being “Southern Tibet,” will likely evaporate — because China’s taking of Taiwan by military force will most likely drive India into a defense alliance with Pacific partners, including Australia, Japan, South Korea and the United States.
China can also then give up any pretensions of making good on its claims to several islands in the South China Sea, including Japan’s Senkaku Islands. Moreover, China’s economy will likely take a massive hit because western sanctions — à la Russia after its invasion of Ukraine — are sure to follow. In the same vein, China’s floating of a so-called “trial balloon” to spy on the U.S. met its comeuppance, when it was shot down today by a resolute Biden administration. So, yes, as the title of Mr. Kagan’s article suggests — for China to challenge the U.S. would be not just a historic mistake, but also a catastrophic one. Let’s pray wiser heads prevail in Beijing.”
Role Reversal.
If there is one thing that we learned the hard way in the pandemic era was how dependent the United States is on China, when it comes to the supply chain for its business sector — from small to large. So, it seemed kind of surreal to me that the liberal media, which is normally considered anti-business, took a softer line towards China during the balloon incident. While the conservative media, which is typically very pro-business, came down hard on China’s spy balloon intrusion. This role reversal has been confounding in more ways than one because it is going to make it difficult to reach consensus on how we need to deal with China going forward. Nonetheless, Congress took some feckless action on February 9, 2023, when the House of Representatives passed an unanimous “resolution condemning China’s use of spy balloon.”
It so happens that I have been warning about our unbridled engagement with China for decades. In fact, back in July 2021, I had published a lengthy Medium commentary, “CHESS MASTER: China’s Long-Term Strategy For World Domination,” which covered its multi-pronged efforts in this regard. If we can’t take the China bull by the horns, it’s going to cause significant long-term damage to our national security. We need a determined Congress to get more proactive with regards to a national security threat that has been brewing for a long, long time. Countering this threat will require going beyond just banning Tik-Tok, which is a good starting point, anyway.
“Just do it.”
We must not allow our broader business interests in China to supplant our national security interests, so this role reversal by media elites on either side of the political spectrum might be a blessing in disguise. It indicates that a compromise on containing China’s belligerent behavior is possible. China’s spying on the homeland is a sideshow to distract us from the economic stranglehold that China has over our broader economy. Our military will continue to take out hostile, unidentified flying objects to protect the homeland. Meanwhile, U.S. businesses must continue to diversify their operations out of China and into various other Indo-Pacific nations. It will not only make us less reliant on China, but also it will negatively impact China’s economy as our labor-intensive supply chains migrate to other nations and many of our high-tech supply chains return stateside. This is a win-win strategy as it will dilute China’s economic power and strengthen our own. With apologies to Nike — the U.S. footwear giant in China — “Just do it” must become the catch-all mantra for all U.S. businesses with an objective of moving their operations out of China. Bursting the (China) balloon at home was the easy part, deflating it overseas is the seminal challenge going forward. We cannot afford to fail.
