The Chinese balloon did expose America’s weakness. And it was not Biden.

The alleged Chinese spy balloon, which flew across the continental United States before being shot down, has allowed many commentators the opportunity to tear into President Biden who is already suffering from low approval ratings amid high inflation woes.

Predictably the Chinese state media blasted Biden for his “lack of crisis management”, for being “laughably juvenile” and “hysterical”, proving once again the relevancy of the classic Soviet joke that people living in the totalitarian country do enjoy the freedom of speech, because they get to insult the US president as freely as Americans do. 

China insists the balloon was “mainly” for meteorological research, leaving enough wiggle room for a spy vehicle the size of three school buses to fly through. Chinese experts, cited by state media, scoffed at the idea of using balloons for espionage, even though the Chinese military’s own news outlet, the PLA Daily, had previously reported on its effort to develop balloon platforms that “may become submarines in the deep sea, a silent killer that brings terror”.

Beijing’s outrage over the ill fate of its balloon is also undermined by reports from state media that its air force practiced shooting down a balloon in 2019 during a drill to demonstrate its ability to protect the security of China’s air defense. In 2001 a US Navy EP-3 spy plane was stripped bare of its reconnaissance equipment by China then returned to the US in parts after it made an emergency landing on a Chinese airfield as a result of mid-air collision with a PLA fighter jet.

Curiously, as the Foreign and Defense ministries vehemently protested about its downing, no actual Chinese meteorological and other scientific institutions have come out to claim ownership of the airship. Imagine the propaganda value of a tearful weather scientist in a lab coat telling state TV how hurt she was watching her million-dollar research equipment blown apart by a reckless American F-22 fighter pilot.

If it were indeed a weather research balloon, international regulations require proper authorization from and communication in advance to relevant air traffic authorities for air safety reasons, and there has been no evidence of that so far from China.

In Britain, Dr Yu Jie from the Chatham House opined in the Guardian that the saga says far more about Biden’s “political weakness” than China’s strength. Here Sky News Australia highlighted a survey conducted by a conservative friendly pollster showing the majority of Americans disapproving of Biden's handling of the crisis. 

In the US criticism of Biden went into overdrive while the balloon was in the air, mostly along partisan divide. 

Former president Donald Trump boasted that “the Chinese would never have floated the Blimp (“Balloon”) over the United States if I were President!!!”, before the Pentagon confirmed that three other Chinese balloons did transit through US airspace during his administration. While claiming Biden was too weak to shoot down the balloon, Trump also bizarrely suggested offering China “the greatest deal EVER” to buy it back. 

The highest ranking elected Republican politician, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, tweeted that Biden “won’t defend our skies”. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said “President Biden should stop coddling and appeasing the Chinese communists”, while other Republican lawmakers piled on.

Mike Pompeo, a potential presidential candidate and Former Secretary of State under Trump, dedicated a whole op-ed condemning Biden’s “astonishing weakness”. Several high-profile republicans, including Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, and failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, made clowns of themselves by posting on social media pointing their guns to the sky, prompting law enforcement officials to plead with the public not to attempt shooting the balloon with their guns as the bullets couldn’t reach that high but would fall back to endanger people on the ground. 

Foxnews, the most popular cable news channel, spent days lamenting that Biden didn’t take down the balloon soon enough, wildly speculating that it could have carried a new virus, with some hosts going so far as suggesting the reason for the delay was China had compromising information on the Biden family through Hunter Biden’s laptop.

In a democratic and adversarial political system, a certain level of point scoring and media posturing is inevitable, par for the course for political debate, even on national security matters. During the Trump presidency, democrats and US media were relentlessly critical of Trump’s handling of foreign relations with Russia and China, often justifiably. 

But this time, the conservative opposition’s behavior is clearly damaging America’s national interest. 

US military commanders, not political appointees but rather professional soldiers dedicating their entire career to protect the country, have repeatedly assured the public that they were tracking the Chinese balloon the moment it entered US airspace, that intelligence assessment concluded that it posed no immediate military or civilian threat, that President Biden had given the order to shoot it down when possible, that they were taking measures to protect against foreign intelligence collection of sensitive information, gaining operation intelligence by monitoring the device, that the recommendations from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were to allow it to continue its path and have it brought over coastal waters in order to avoid putting civilians on the ground at unnecessary risk due to the size of potential debris field.

In the end, the balloon was taken down by a US Sidewinder air-to-air missile above the Atlantic Ocean without incident. The US Navy and the FBI are collecting the debris off the South Carolina coast. Biden’s caution and deference to the military experts proved to be the correct course of action. In fact, had the balloon been struck over Montana and if a single civilian were injured or worse, killed, I can bet on my house that the Republican controlled Congress would have already initiated impeachment proceedings against President Biden by now.

To be fair to Beijing, hypocrisy and double standards are alway part of any country’s toolbox in international relations. The US has over 100 spy satellites in orbit, twice as many as China, and the Pentagon has been conducting surveillance programs using high altitude balloons over other countries for decades. The White House, along with the US intelligence community, has been known throughout history for manipulating intelligence to suit their political agenda, from Vietnam to Iraq.

But healthy skepticism over one’s own government is one thing, willful rejection of expert advice, on such important matters as national security, in order to damage the political standing of the President from another party, is quite another. To borrow from Will Saletan writing in the conservative website The Bulwark, the Republicans are increasingly devolved into a dangerous psychopathology of denial of evidence (be it about Benghazi, covid, vaccines or election results), cult of personality for Trump, and the ruthless pursuit of power for power’s sake. 

America’s freedom and diversity is its strength. But for its democracy to function, the opposition party must be loyal to a higher ideal, rather than exploiting the freedom for short term political gains at the expense of the country’s domestic security and international standing. The past two weeks might be just a trial balloon. I shudder to think what would happen when a real crisis, or heaven helps us, war hits.