Deflating China’s trial spy balloon

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an advisor at Gallos Technologies. She is a regular contributing columnist for POLITICO Europe.

The tale of the Chinese balloon, which traversed the United States before the military shot it down off the East Coast, has been entertaining TV watchers around the world. But this balloon was no joke, and the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden made the right decision, shooting it down once it reached open water.

However, mighty America’s encounter with this mysterious intruder raises urgent questions for the country’s European allies: Would they be able to see off a Chinese balloon, or other nonmilitary provocation, on their own? And would allies be willing to see such intrusions as worthy of assistance along NATO’s collective defense obligations per Article 5?

When the mysterious balloon first appeared in the skies above the state of Montana and U.S. authorities briefed journalists that it was Chinese, Beijing initially dismissed it as a baseless allegation. Then, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs admitted it was, in fact, a Chinese airship but said it was used for “mainly meteorological” purposes, adding that China “regrets the unintended entry” of the balloon into U.S. airspace.

However, it doesn’t actually matter whether the balloon was spying or merely monitoring the weather — what does matter is that a Chinese airship sailed into U.S. airspace without permission, and through Canadian airspace before that, making a fool of the mighty U.S. military. Yes, the U.S. Air Force could have downed the balloon the moment it crossed into its airspace, but then it would have risked debris falling and possibly killing civilians on the ground, resulting in huge uproar. And because the balloon was not a fighter jet, there was no immediate imperative to shoot it down. So, the military held its fire, transfixing a global public and allowing Beijing to signal it can outfox America even in its own backyard.

That’s precisely the point of such stunts — and countries like China are using them with increasing frequency.

Fleets of Chinese excavators regularly appear off the coast of Taiwan’s Matsu Islands and dig up Taiwanese sand. Their presence is an act of provocation, but it doesn’t warrant a military response. Instead, Taiwanese Coast Guard vessels haave to sail out to the diggers and demand they leave. It’s a nuisance and a drain on Taiwan’s resources, and it allows China to suggest Taiwan is powerless to defend its own waters.

Indeed, fleets of civilian Chinese vessels frequently park themselves in another country’s waters to send the same message. Russia, meanwhile, has been moving its border with Georgia in small increments, taking tiny bits of territory from its neighbor each time. And in 2021, Belarus began weaponizing migrants who were incentivized to cross the border into Lithuania, Poland and Latvia — a goading ploy to demonstrate that the European Union is incapable of defending its borders.

A military assault is hardly the appropriate response to such acts of provocation – but it’s also not clear what is. And now, we have Chinese balloons to contend with.

For its part, the U.S. military had the aircraft that could shoot the intruder down – and even more importantly, it has armed forces so powerful, they could take China on if Beijing decided to retaliate. But what if a Chinese balloon entered, say, Estonia?

This would be a violation of Estonia’s sovereignty, but “the problem for a small country is that there wouldn’t be enough space to maneuver to shoot it down,” said retired General Riho Terras, a former Estonian Chief of Defense and current member of the European Parliament. “It would enter and leave Estonia in a very short time.” The Baltic nation does, of course, have NATO fighter jets on standby in case of aerial intrusions, and “something like this could be a case for Baltic Air Policing,” Terras said.

But the reality is that nobody knows.

The task of NATO’s Baltic Air Policing is to defend the Baltic states against Russian fighter jets, just as any country’s air force defends against hostile fighter jets. But a balloon? Two balloons? An armada of balloons? What about other intrusions? “Even in 2001, we were in doubt about whether the Twin Towers constituted an Article 5 attack since it had never before been invoked in response to a terrorist attack,” George Robertson, NATO’s then-Secretary General, told me. “But on the day, it seemed the right thing to do.”

Today, however, with aggression below the Article 5 threshold growing, individual countries and groups of NATO member countries should signal that they will punish any intruder. “The essence of deterrence is ambiguity, so that the adversary needs to make a big gamble,” Robertson pointed out. “The territory of the Article 5 Guarantee is well known, and any adversary would be taking a big risk with any attack — conventional or otherwise.”

Countries don’t need to specify how they will respond, and their response may not include the military, but they should leave no doubt that they will, indeed, act against any intrusion. Otherwise, China will keep goading, and so will other hostile-minded countries.