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The appearance of a Chinese high-altitude balloon above the United States constitutes the latest move in China’s “gray-zone” efforts to undermine its rivals’ sovereignty and improve Beijing’s wartime advantage.
The United States should learn from China’s gambit and respond in kind.
For more than a decade, China has taken control of the South China Sea not with gunboats, but with a vast fishing fleet. Combined with Beijing’s island-building, the maritime militia gives China de facto control over critical international transit lanes. In recent years these efforts expanded to support illegal fishing in other countries’ waters and sensitive ecological areas.
In this context, the balloon can be seen as the first in what could be many such deployments as China seeks to degrade US control over its skies. Moreover, by offering closer looks than surveillance satellites, the balloon can provide Chinese leaders new intelligence on America’s nuclear ballistic-missile silos, bomber bases and communications networks.
China says the balloon went off course and wandered into US airspace. This is unlikely, as stratospheric balloons have been in operation for decades and have well-understood and robust control mechanisms.
