The Biden-Chinese Strategy to Build a Secure World: Sullivan’s Comments on the First 2021 Summit between the United States and China
The two leaders also spoke about North Korea — a longstanding regional security issue. Biden made it clear that if Beijing is not able to rein in North Korea’s weapons ambitions, the US will have to increase its presence in the region.
The document came 21 months into Biden’s term. Over the last seven years, there have been evidence of a focus on rebuilding global partnerships and attempting to counter China and Russia.
Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, said the strategy made clear the White House wasn’t seeing the world through a strategic competition lens.
“We will not leave our future vulnerable to the whims of those who do not share our vision for a world that is free, open, prosperous, and secure,” he goes on. “As the world continues to navigate the lingering impacts of the pandemic and global economic uncertainty, there is no nation better positioned to lead with strength and purpose than the United States of America.”
“Russia poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order today, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown,” the document reads. “(China), by contrast, is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.”
“This decisive decade is critical both for defining the terms of competition, particular with the (People’s Republic of China), and for getting ahead of massive challenges that if we lose the time this decade we will not be able to keep pace with,” he said.
The first US-China summit under the new Biden administration in March 2021, was marked by a tense relationship between the two largest economies grappling with a simmering trade war.
Since then, ties between the United States and China have chilled further, particularly after the US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August. It helps explain why expectations were so low for the meeting between Joe Biden and the Chinese leader.
Today, trust is low, the rhetoric is not neutral, and there are disagreements in areas including trade, technology, security and ideology.
“There’s not going to be a joint statement of any sort here. A senior U.S. official told reporters this week that the meeting was not being driven by deliverables. The president believes that building a floor for the relationship and having clear rules of the road is critical to the success of the relationship.
Since Biden took office, the two leaders have talked by phone several times but have been unable to reverse the downward slide in ties between the world’s two largest economies.
He said that the cooling of the China-US tensions was signaled by the resumption of China-US top leaders’ direct dialogue.
Biden said on Wednesday his goal for the meeting is to get a deeper understanding of Xi’s priorities and concerns, and “lay out what each of our red lines are.”
Beijing and Beijing Can’t Get Along With China: An Insight from a High-Energy Plan for a Possible US-China War on Taiwan
US officials have expressed concern that those moves could be precursors to even more aggressive steps by China in the coming months meant to assert its authority over the island. Under Biden, the US has sent defensive weapons to Taiwan it hopes will create a massive stockpile in the event China moves on the island.
“Those who play with fire will perish by it. It is hoped that the U.S. will be clear-eyed about this,” Xi warned Biden over the summer, when the two leaders met virtually.
And in October, the Communist Party chief again reiterated that China’s preference would be for “peaceful reunification” but repeated that the use of force remains an option.
Beijing and Washington will resume climate talks that had been frozen after Pelosi visited Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own. The leaders agreed to empower senior officials to keep communication, the White House said.
Biden will likely seek to reassure Xi that Washington’s long-standing policy regarding Taiwan has not changed, and that the United States does not support Taiwan independence. Analysts say Xi is likely to remain skeptical — particularly with the Republican Party projected to take control of at least the House of Representatives following the midterm elections.
A professor of international relations says the Biden administration will be less flexible in their dealings with China.
What Xi’s thinking about the world has to say about China: How Beijing’s response to the Cold War has affected the world’s leading technology
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has said he would like to visit Taiwan if he becomes majority leader. Such a move could be very bad, warns another Chinese expert.
When Pelosi left, the Chinese did not know what to think. Next time, maybe they will just take action,” says a Chinese expert on international affairs, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized by his university to speak to the media.
Chris Miller, author of the recently published Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, says that during the Cold War the U.S. imposed a series of tough export controls on the Soviet Union. There’s a large amount of similarities to be honest.
The U.S. has altered its policies on all counts since Beijing’s perspective. It has imposed the semiconductor export bans and sanctioned some of China’s leading technology firms — moves Beijing decried.
In China’s case, enforcing the restrictions could be difficult, though. Microchips are small and easy to smuggle across borders. Also, total enforcement would require other countries that are part of the complex semiconductors supply chain to be on board, and that’s a work in progress.
Beijing has voiced opposition to the move, and officials decry Washington’s “Cold War zero-sum mentality.” China has yet to take action in response, though. Analysts say the controls were announced at an awkward time for Chinese policy makers and may have been because of that.
Both the leader of China and President Biden stated that they were open to reestablishing channels of communication, and that they had been compared to a second Cold War.
Direct communication is all the more important given Xi has just secured a norm-shattering third term with a tighter grip on power than ever – and a possibility to rule for life. Sullivan said there was no one else in their system that could communicate authoritatively than China’s leader.
There is a window of opportunity “to take a little bit of a gamble,” he believes, now that China’s Party Congress and the U.S. midterm elections are over.
Biden vs. China: The U.S.-Measurement Crisis in the Pre-G20 Summit Era
But Zhu warns that nobody should expect too much from this summit. A sincere discussion may help deepen understanding between the two leaders, he says — but that’s it.
Medeiros, the former U.S. official, says the current moment is dangerous — and in some ways, similar to the 1950s and early 1960s, when mistrust grew between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and they each “tested and probed” each others’ boundaries.
“After the Cuban Missile Crisis, both sides, because of that incredibly searing experience, internalized the belief that strategic restraint, often institutionalized through things like arms control agreements, was in their mutual interests,” he says.
Beijing condemned the plan immediately. “It is egregious in nature. The foreign ministry of China stated that it was firmly opposed to it after it was confirmed that there would be a meeting between the two men.
The two leaders agreed to sit down together in Bali, Indonesia just ahead of the G-20 summit. They were going to meet at 4:30 a.m. The White house said it would last at least a couple of hours. Afterward, Biden is set to give remarks and take questions at 8:30 a.m. ET (9:30 p.m. local).
After Democrats regained control of the Senate and narrowed their losses in the House, Biden got a lift as he prepared for his international travels. Sullivan said that leaders in Egypt and Cambodia met with Biden and were aware of the results.
The stakes of their much-anticipated meeting are high. In a world reeling from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Covid-19 pandemic and the devastation of climate change, the two major powers need to work together more than ever to instill stability – instead of driving deeper tensions along geopolitical fault lines.
A senior White House official said on Thursday that Biden wants to prevent the relationship from falling into conflict by using the talks to build a floor. A US official stated that the main goal of the sit-down is not about reaching agreements or deliverables but about gaining a better understanding of each other’s priorities and reducing misconception.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan suggested Saturday the meeting will not lead to specific deliverables, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that the leaders will “be able to discuss broader security issues in the Indo-Pacific and also, specifically, the threats posed by North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs.”
Nor is his assessment for climate cooperation any rosier. “China and the US can find many common interests on this, but when it comes to how to deal with climate change specifically, it always leads to antagonism on policies and rivalry over ideology and global influence,” Shi said.
Kennedy recently returned from a weeks long visit to China and said that both sides blame the other for the state of the relationship although both believe they are in a better position.
They are willing to pay for these costs because the Chinese and Americans think they are winning. Kennedy said that they think the other side is not likely to make any significant changes. The likelihood of significant adjustments is reduced by all of those things.
The fact that the two leaders are talking to each other is a positive development according to experts. Keeping dialogue open is crucial for reducing risks of misunderstanding and miscalculations, especially when suspicions run deep and tensions run high.
The US and China don’t seem to be very exact about what they want to do, so I would like to be on the wall to see that conversation. Kennedy, of CSIS, said they don’t have clear idea about what rewards the other side would get if they stayed within the red lines.
China halted dialogue with the US in many areas, including military, climate change, and border crime, after launching large scale military exercises around Taiwan that formed an effective blockade.
Taiwan is expected to top the agenda when the two leaders sit down in the same room. Barbs have already been exchanged in a sign of the contentiousness of the issue.
According to a White House statement, after their meeting with Biden and Xi, they agreed that no nuclear war should ever be fought and that the use of nuclear weapons inUkraine is not in the interest of the United States. The Chinese readout did not include any mention of nuclear weapons.
Some progress on greater communication and access between the two countries will be considered a positive result, as it will help to restore some suspended military talks.
PRESIDENT JOHAN BIDDEN’S INTERGRAL COMMISSION OVER THE SPACE OF THE ASEAN ASEAN COLLISION
President Joe Biden landed in Cambodia on Saturday still reveling in midterm election results that have produced an unexpected boost at home for his second two years in office.
A day after he arrived in Asia, CNN and other outlets in his home state projected that his party would retain control of the Senate, which would provide him with a lift through his international tour.
Yet the scale of the challenges abroad, and the effort to translate 21 months of intensive engagement into tangible results for US alliances, will put the value of that political capital on the international stage to the test even as votes are still being counted.
“One thing that President Biden certainly wants to do with our closest allies is preview what he intends to do, and also ask the leaders of (South Korea) and Japan, ‘What would you like me to raise? What do you desire me to do? Sullivan said it will be a topic but not the main event of the trilateral.
But that cooperation is imperative as recent, stepped-up aggression from North Korea will be top of mind for the trio of leaders Sunday. According to a count by CNN, North Korea has fired missiles for 32 days this year. By contrast, it conducted only four tests in 2020, and eight in 2021.
The significance of the United States to our relationship with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and our commitment to that community, is a testament to how important the summit was. ASEAN is the heart of my administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy. And we continue to strengthen our commitment to work in lockstep with an empowered, unified ASEAN,” Biden said in brief opening remarks as the summit began.
Biden, the official added, will “lay out our vision for keeping up a pace of enhanced engagement and trying to also address concerns of importance to ASEAN in ways that they are looking for,” keeping with an ongoing theme during the Biden presidency of building alliances in strategic competition with China.
Among the key topics of discussion this weekend in Cambodia, the official said, is the ongoing conflict in Myanmar, where the military seized power in a coup last year.
World leaders will discuss “efforts to promote respect for human rights, rule of law and good governance, the rules-based international order, and also to address the ongoing crisis in Burma.”
On Friday, Biden made a three-hour stop in Sharm El Shiekh, Egypt, where he attended the COP27 climate summit and met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.
In the highly symbolic choreography of the US-Chinese relationship, Biden’s statements were unusually direct and raise questions about how Beijing will respond, even if his tone spoke to a charged domestic political context as Republicans complain he was too slow to shoot down the balloon.
Do I believe he’s willing to compromise on some issues? Yes,” Biden told reporters afterward about his meeting with Xi. “We were very blunt with one another about places where we disagreed.”
“He’ll be able to sit and be absolutely straightforward and direct, and he will also be able to hear the president speak directly in return,” Jake Sullivan told reporters on Air Force One.
Sullivan said that the White House hopes the leaders will come away from the meeting with a better understanding of how to manage their relationship and competition.
The phone call between President Xi and David Trone during a midterm term in Beijing and the emergence of an economic economic crisis
In Beijing, at the recently concluded Party Congress, Xi consolidated his power, securing a third term as head of China’s ruling Communist Party and appointing a slate of his loyalists into top political and military positions. But he also faces a weak domestic economy that has cratered in large part to strict zero-COVID policies and dramatic property regulations championed by Xi.
An otherwise-fraught relationship is one of the reasons why Xi indicated he was looking to appease it. He said that China stood ready to work with the US to find the right way to get along.
Last year, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi put out three core demands — “bottom lines” — that China wanted the U.S. to agree to in order for relations to improve: to not get in the way in the country’s development, to respect China’s claims over places like Taiwan and to respect Beijing’s Communist Party rule.
“I think it’s more, how can we find ways to communicate about those issues where we have deep fundamental differences of perspective or concerns, but we need to be having continued and ongoing conversation,” said a senior administration official briefing reporters before Biden met with Xi.
Thirty-seven minutes after wrapping up a late-night gala dinner with Asian leaders – punctuated by plates of wild Mekong lobster and beef saraman – an aide handed President Joe Biden the phone.
On the other end of the line was David Trone, the millionaire Maryland wine retailer who was thousands of miles and a time zone 12 hours away and had just clinched another term in the House.
The call wasn’t long, a person familiar with it said, but reflected the warmth and enthusiasm Biden had deployed hundreds of times in calls to winning candidates over the last week – each one cementing a midterm election that dramatically reshaped the prevailing view of his presidency.
But on the other side of the world, Biden’s advisers say there has been a tangible effect tied to election results that, had they matched historical trends, threatened to undermine his standing ahead of the most consequential meeting of his first two years.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan provided a glimpse into dynamics of the moment, pointing to the fact “that many leaders took note of the results of the midterms, came up to the president to engage him and to say that they were following them closely.”
Sullivan said during the course of the two days that the theme about the strength of American democracy and what the election said about it was the one he came up with.
Predicting the Election: The Reflections of a Superconducting US Vice President on a Growing Issue of Geopolitical Concern
White House officials who were bracing for losses in the weeks before the election have shown no fear of being called out by pundits or politicians who predicted otherwise.
The reflection is a reflection of the team that feels constantly underestimated and has always coveted success after being in office for two-thirds of the term.
White House officials had been circling the G-20 as the likely sit-down with Xi for months. There was a lot of preparation going on before the public announcement of the engagement. The tenuous state of the relationship necessitated a sit down, regardless of domestic politics.
In the weeks leading up to the election, White House advisers downplayed the effect sweeping midterm losses would have on the weight of Biden’s presence and message abroad, citing the same historical trends they would later buck.
But privately, multiple people familiar with the matter said, there was an awareness of the potential split screen of a US president grappling with his party’s political defeat at the same moment Xi would arrive in Bali at the peak of his power in the wake of the Community Party Congress, during which he secured a norm-breaking third term in power.
One US official said political standing andception affect each other. “It’s not the be-all, end-all, and it was never a central focus or driver of the dynamics, but we’re well aware of the fact everyone was watching this election around the world.”
Far from a liability, however, each of the congratulatory calls back home have underscored the driving wind at the back of a president who entered the meeting with Xi at a moment where US-China relations appear to be inching away from great power competition toward inevitable conflict.
The results weren’t a necessity for the meeting to achieve its goals, because Biden’s long-standing relationship with Xi formed during their times as their nations’ vice president. US officials are careful not to overstate the effect of a trip in a region where the layers of complexity and challenges surpass what voters decide in a congressional district or swing state.
Yet Biden isn’t subtle about his sweeping view of the geopolitical stakes of a moment he’s repeatedly framed as a generational “inflection point,” centered on the battle between democracy and autocracy.
“What I find is that they want to know: Is the United States stable? Do we know what we are doing? Are we the same democracy we’ve always been?” Biden said at his post-election news conference as he described his conversations with world leaders.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/politics/midterms-joe-biden-xi-jinping-meeting/index.html
Biden: From the G20 to the Indonesian Redrawn District of President Donald Trump, a man who lived through the hardships of his presidency
Former President Donald Trump, whose election lies had driven the assault on the US Capitol, hadn’t faded away and he remained the most powerful figure inside the Republican Party.
Biden had cobbled together a package of domestic legislation that was done on a bipartisan basis. Yet he still held an approval rating in the low 40s, weighed down by four-decade high inflation and a population exhausted by years careening from crisis to crisis.
The possibility that Biden would face the same harsh judgment of his first two years in office as nearly all his recent predecessors wasn’t just likely. It was going to happen.
After moving through a series of bilateral meetings, Biden felt vindicated by his approach on the world stage.
After Biden left the summit, he felt like it established a strong position for him on the international stage, and Sullivan thinks it played out in living color today. When we go to the G20 and to his bilateral engagements in Indonesia, I think we will see that as well.
Dina was reelected, despite a tough battle in her redrawn district. Biden needed to pass along his congratulations.
The World Meets Beijing: Two Powerful Leaders in the Foreign Policy Issues of the United States and the Emerging Threat to the Middle East
The summit in Indonesia yielded two important outcomes, according to the US: A joint position that Russia must not use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine and an expected resumption of talks on climate between American and Chinese negotiators, a boost for the COP 27 global climate conference in Egypt.
That the world’s two most powerful leaders had not been addressing these issues together in recent months shows how the entire world suffers when Washington and Beijing are as deeply estranged as they’ve been this year.
Leon Panetta, a former White House chief of staff, defence secretary and CIA chief, expressed cautious optimism after the talks on the sidelines of the G20 summit.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that either side should not try to remake the other in their own image or change their system.
Biden publicly told Xi that the US was ready to reengage in climate talks – at an opportune moment for the Egypt climate summit. The White House said after the talks that the two leaders had agreed to empower senior officials to maintain communication and deepen efforts on climate change, global macroeconomic stability and global food security.
So, Washington’s foreign policy has come full circle, since part of Richard Nixon’s motivation in engaging China during the 1970s Cold War deep freeze was to open strategic gaps between Beijing and Moscow.
Things aren’t so different now, though the dynamic between the Kremlin and Beijing has reversed, with China the global power and Russia the junior partner.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken will go to China before the end of the year, followed by a visit to Beijing in the early months of next year, according to the State Department.
The world is large enough for the countries to prosper together, as was demonstrated by their meeting with Biden, according to a foreign ministry spokeswoman.
China and the stock market after Russia invaded Ukraine in February: a summit on economic & political stability and a positive outlook for Beijing and Washington
China appears to have been caught by surprise when Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Beijing has called repeatedly for a peaceful, negotiated end to the war.
And while Biden came in to the G20 with a stronger position due to the narrow Democratic victory in the battle to control the Senate, he is up for reelection in two years himself.
Analysts said the meeting could lay the groundwork for stronger ties between the world’s top economic powerhouses. The stock markets in mainland China, as well as in Hong Kong, were up on Tuesday.
Neil Thomas, senior analyst for China and Northeast Asia at Eurasia Group, commented that the goal of the meeting was to “build a floor” under declining relations between Beijing and Washington.
Ken Cheung believes the meeting was positive and shows that the two sides wanted to work out a solution.
The Hang Seng Index went up almost 4% on Tuesday and was on track for a third straight day of gains. The index, boosted by China’s latest policy shift towards a gradual reopening of borders and a sweeping rescue package for the ailing property sector, has soared 14% since last Thursday.
Chinese technology shares, which had been hammered by a regulatory crackdown at home and rising geopolitical tension abroad, led markets higher on Tuesday. In Hong Kong, shares ofAlibaba were up by 11 and shares of Tencent were up 10%.
The US-China Air Force Interception Over the South China Sea: What do we really need to know about the outcome of the G20 summit?
“This was far more progress than we, or indeed most commentators had expected, and dominates what may otherwise turn out to have been a fairly irrelevant G20 summit,” the ING analysts said.
Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.
The interception of a United States Air Force reconnaissance jet by a Chinese fighter over the South China Sea last month should be seen as a potential warning of how easily, and quickly things can go terribly wrong – raising the risk of a deadly military confrontation between the two powers, analysts say.
The video shows a Chinese fighter flying to the left of the US jet and then closing in on its nose, similar to Boeing 707 airliners of the 1960s and 1970s.
The small distance between the US and China in the videos makes little room for error, according to experts.
“The 135 is an unarmed aircraft. Why does the PLAN consider it necessary to intercept carrying missiles when the intent was to visually identify the aircraft? Doing this is potentially dangerous and could lead to a major and tragic incident,” Layton said.
The fighter flew so close, it created an incident, and that was captured on a high quality video camera the fighters crew just happened to have. The plan seems to be well planned, if rather risky, he said.
“The (Chinese) response is so far divorced from reality that it is fictional. An airliner-sized aircraft does not turn into an armed fighter.
The US military risked ruining the event by saying the US jet had to take evasive maneuvers, a term he described as “overly dramatic” and also warned against blowing it out of proportion.
“These are no different than a driver adjusting her position to avoid a temporary lane incursion by an adjacent driver,” Hopkins said. The US response is pure theater and creates an exaggerated sense of danger.
The American Enterprise Institute’s policy expert on defense and defense policy said that flying aircraft close to each other with unfriendly intentions is generally unsafe.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/03/china/us-china-south-china-sea-intercept-intl-hnk-mic-ml/index.html
The latest US provocations threaten stability in the South China Sea: China’s response to the President’s State of the Union address on Tuesday
“It’s worth remembering that the PLA has effectively wrecked any kind of hotlines or discussion forums for addressing potential incidents with the United States. If an intercept does go wrong, there are fewer options than ever for senior officers to limit potential escalation,” he said.
But in a regular press briefing on Friday, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the incident was just the latest in a string of US provocations that threaten stability in the region.
The Chinese Southern Theater Command said the US reconnaissance jet was flying “in the vicinity of China’s southern coastline and the Xisha Islands” – known in the West as the Paracels – where Beijing has built up military installations.
The US does not recognize these territorial claims and routinely conducts operations there, including freedom of navigation operations through the South China Sea.
In the most infamous incident in 2001, a Chinese fighter jet collided with a US reconnaissance plane near Hainan Island in the northern South China Sea, leading to a major crisis as the Chinese pilot was killed and the damaged US plane barely managed a safe landing on Chinese territory. The US crew was released after 11 days of intense negotiations.
Is the recent incidents connected with Beijing’s espionage programme described by the administration following the shooting down of the Chinese balloon and reports of other balloons over US territory? A Chinese violation of US airspace would be seen as a serious blow to US-China relations, and possibly the start of a 21st century Cold War.
Biden called out Beijing on Tuesday before millions of viewers in the US and around the world as diplomatic tensions with China soar and new details emerge of an expansive Chinese balloon surveillance program.
Finally, what is the political impact of this string of incidents. Biden was criticized by Republicans for citing the possibility of injury to civilians or damage to buildings on the ground for waiting so long to shoot down the Chinese balloon earlier this month. He forcibly warned China in his subsequent State of the Union address that he would defend US sovereignty. His aides have said his response to subsequent incidents was similar to a decisive commander in chief. The White House understands the political danger in wait if Americans perceive that he is not doing everything to defend the homeland.
Biden specifically named China’s leader as he slammed autocracies and argued for the superiority of democracies.
Who is a world leader who would change places with them? I would like to name me one. Biden met his Chinese counterpart in Indonesia last year and has known him for a long time. The president had almost shouted at the end of the sentence that was viewed as contempt for China at a time when the country’s economic developments are being overshadowed by mismanagement.
The alternative in this scenario – that Xi was aware that a balloon was being dispatched over the United States ahead of a visit from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing – would raise a separate set of concerns about China’s decision-making in relation to the US.
The three objects shot down in the North American air space are likely from private entities, according to President Joe Biden.
It is impossible to miss the synergy between his policy toward Russia and China, as he spoke of standing with democracies against autocracies, and applying their power outside of their borders, as well as the attempts by Russia and China to do so.
“The idea shooting down a balloon that’s gathering information over America and that makes relations worse?” Biden told PBS NewsHour in an interview on Tuesday night after his second State of the Union address.
The balloon was in the air as US officials objected to Chinese officials. According to senior administration officials, they communicated with Chinese officials after the balloon was shot down.
The meeting was delayed until a later date, which Biden administration officials insisted was not a cancellation. That date has not yet been set.
Biden was asked if there was an indication of why China would commit a overt act. He said they were the Chinese government.
Biden administration officials have maintained they were able to move quickly to mitigate any intelligence collection capacity of the balloon and have countered that they will end up benefiting from the ability to collect information about the balloon and Chinese intelligence capabilities, both during its flight and in the recovery of its wreckage from the Atlantic Ocean.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s office said the chamber will vote Thursday on a resolution “condemning the Chinese Communist Party’s use of a high-altitude surveillance balloon over United States territory as a brazen violation of United States sovereignty.”
Biden on Thursday justified the decision to wait to shoot the Chinese balloon, saying he gave the green light for the US military to take it down “as soon as it was safe to do so.”
The Response of Vice President Biden to the Invasion of Airspace by the Russian-Embedded Security Forces in the Crime of the “Irregular” Ukraine
He described how he told China not to give military support to Russia in the invasion of Ukraine, as US officials warned China not to.
Although the US officials have access to these reports, whether they read them or not, it’s a matter of discretion as to whether those reports are included in briefings to senior policymakers.
Instead of treating the object as a danger, the US decided to look at it as an opportunity to observe and collect intelligence.
It wasn’t until the balloon entered Alaskan airspace, on January 28, and then took a sharp turn south that officials came to believe it was on a course to cross over the continental US – and that its mission might be to spy on the US mainland.
The officials who were aware of the original report conceded that they didn’t see the balloon as an urgent threat until it was over US territory.
The blame game is getting hotter. Republican Mike Turner of Ohio, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, pointed to GOP claims that Vice President Biden is not doing enough to protect the southern border as a reason for the incursions of US air space. He criticized Biden as well as the president given the claims that he didn’t act quickly before.
On January 28, when the balloon entered US airspace near Alaska, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, sent up fighter jets to make a positive identification, according to defense officials, reflecting a subtle shift in urgency.
Military officials said that it’s unsurprising that the president was not briefed until January 31, given the expectations for the balloon.
Congress is interested in how the administration’s decision making process is related to the balloon.
An assessment of the U.S. Mission to South Korea based on a PLF surveillance balloon and a “fleet” of balloons
“There are still a lot of questions to be asked about Alaska,” a Senate Republican aide told CNN. “Alaska is still part of the United States – why is that okay to transit Alaska without telling anyone, but [the continental US] is different?”
One pilot took a selfie in the cockpit that shows both the pilot and the surveillance balloon itself, these officials said – an image that has already gained legendary status in both NORAD and the Pentagon.
According to CNN, an assessment was sent to American lawmakers on Thursday, and it is possible that the assessment can show a lack of coordination within the Chinese system at a difficult time in US-China relations.
It could mean that Xi and his top advisers underestimated the potential gravity of the fallout of the mission and the possibility it could imperil Blinken’s visit, which would have been the first from the most senior US diplomat since 2018 and had been welcomed by Beijing as a path to easing strained ties.
Feb. 8: The U.S. State Department tells reporters the shot-down Chinese balloon is part of a “fleet” of balloons overseen by the People’s Liberation Army. Pictures of the balloon, officials say, showed it had equipment onboard that a normal weather balloon would not need — including large solar panels, multiple antennas and sensors for intelligence surveillance.
Beijing, in a statement last weekend, appeared to link the device to “companies,” rather than the government or military – though in China the prominence of state-owned enterprises and a robust military-industrial complex blurs the line between the two.
“The problem with the centralization of power under Xi Jinping is the lack of delegation of authority to lower levels,” said Thompson, who is a senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
It means that lower-level officials may not be equipped to make political decisions about the impact of missions, and they may not have the capacity to more closely monitor them. Power struggles between lower and higher ranking officials could also complicate communication, he said.
There is a tension in the Chinese system, where lower levels fight for their own independence while upper levels fight for control, he said.
Past crises in China have pointed to tensions, such as the outbreak of SARS in 2002-2003 and the Covid-19, which were seen as having slowed the response and compounded the problem. Some blamed local officials who were used to having information flows from the top down to the bottom.
According to a political scientist at the University of Chicago, balloon launches could also fall into a gap in how they’re managed and overseen.
In this case, entities launching balloons may have received a pat on the back from other countries, including the U.S., and become more commonplace due to weather conditions and at modest costs.
While the leaders of the programs have become more interested in testing new routes over time, they probably did not get top priority attention from the perspective of political risk.
Instead, Xi may have been comfortable with an incident that diverted the attention of a public frustrated amid a faltering economy after years under the recently dismantled zero-Covid policy – but underestimated the US domestic response that resulted in the postponed talks, Wu said.
Meanwhile, Washington may be offering its message that Xi wasn’t aware of the situation as it seeks to “continue the dialogue” started during a meeting between Xi and US President Joe Biden at the G20 summit in Bali, according to Wu.
An Airborne Object Shot Down by the U.S. Army or the F-22 over Alaskan Airspace? What Have We Learned in the Last Two Days?
Since Friday, U.S. forces have brought down three unidentified objects flying above the U.S. and Canada. The American officials have not revealed what the objects were or who sent them.
On Friday, an F-22 shot down another unidentified craft over Alaskan airspace . US pilots were able to get up around an object before it was shot down, but they were not able to see what was going on.
The intrigue is also unfolding against a tense global situation, with already difficult relations with rising superpower China becoming ever more hostile and with the US leading the West in an effective proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
“What’s gone on in the last two weeks or so, 10 days, has been nothing short of craziness,” Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana said Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS, hours before an airborne object was shot down over Lake Huron.
The shooting down of the Chinese balloon off the South Carolina coast on February 4 has resulted in three objects being blasted out of the sky by US fighters.
On Saturday a US F-22 warplane flying on orders of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Biden shot down a large object in the far north of Canada. Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand described a “cylindrical object” smaller than the Chinese balloon.
In fact, NORAD commander Gen. Glen VanHerck said recent objects shot down were likely the first “kinetic action” that NORAD or the US Northern Command had taken against an airborne object over US airspace.
So the events of the last few days do provoke serious national security and political questions that stretch far beyond the often narrow political battle in Washington, and that can only be assessed once more details are understood.
Is it possible that the latest strange objects flying over North America are linked to a hostile power, corporate or private entity? Are they connected, or are they the result of coincidences at a time of heightened awareness and tensions?
If the latter situation is the case, is NORAD now picking up more objects that are potentially hostile given a state of heightened alert after the Chinese balloon crisis? If the objects are suspicious is there a sudden spike in such flights or did such objects fly across the continent with impunity in the past? Is this a new problem that should worry the aviation industry, given the already increased threat to civilian aircraft?
Turner told Jake Tapper that they appear to be triggered-happy, similar to the environment they showed when the Chinese spy balloon came over our most sensitive sites.
Such speculation may be premature. Biden has changed his tolerance threshold for unknown aerial objects because of the political debate.
“Because we have not yet been able to definitively assess what these recent objects are, we have acted out of an abundance of caution to protect our security and interests,” said Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs.
The Chinese spy balloon and the subsequent objects that appeared to be harmless, except perhaps to civilians, caused Mr. Biden to be criticized for being too slow to respond, even though he was chided for overreacting.
“All you have to know is what happened in Alaska and the Yukon”: Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democratic Democrat, and a U.S. Senator
“They are getting lots of positives that they did not get before. Kayyem was a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security.
“What we can’t answer now is, is this bigger aperture picking up lots of stuff that has essentially been forgiven, around in the skies, because it didn’t pose a threat, or is it part of something organized for whatever surveillance?”
There was more confusion on Sunday. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said on ABC’s “This Week” that the two objects shot down over Alaska and the Yukon were balloons but smaller than the original Chinese intruder, after saying he had earlier been briefed by Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser.
The congressman from Montana might have been linking the Chinese balloon and the objects if there was no confirmation that they were connected.
“It doesn’t give me much safe feelings knowing that these devices are smaller,” he said. “I am very concerned with the cumulative data that is being collected. … I need some answers, and the American people need answers.”
What can the air force say about a jet-bomb incident in Hawaii say about U.S. citizen espionage?
Similar balloons were spotted as early as 2019, over Japan. Last winter, the U.S. Air Force in Hawaii scrambled jets to intercept an “unmanned balloon” off the island of Kauai. The head of Taiwan’s central weather bureau initially claimed that there were multiple balloons similar to the one that was shot down by the U.S.
Feb. 9: The U.S. briefs diplomats from 40 countries about the Chinese balloon it shot down. On Capitol Hill, both chambers of Congress receive classified briefings on the incident. The House voted unanimously to condemn China’s alleged espionage on the U.S.
Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee says it could be just residual experiments that were done by anyone. They may be active Wi-Fi balloons. They may be active weather balloons. I’m relatively sure that they’re not a threat in any way to the people of the United States or to our national security.”
And the White House separately reassures Americans: “There is no – again, no — indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre says at her daily briefing.
A Chinese Airship that Strayed into the United States after Force Majorean Wind: Is China Really Interested in Meeting the US Security Conference?
Emily reported from Taiwan. The reporter was in Washington, D.C. Vincent Ni and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.
Blinken and Wang will both attend the Munich Security Conference this weekend. US officials said a meeting between the two is not currently planned but have not fully ruled out the possibility.
The Foreign Ministry of China said in a statement on February 3 that the airship deviated from the scheduled route because of westerly wind and limited self-control. “China regrets that the airship strayed into the United States due to force majeure. China will continue to keep in touch with the US to make sure they handle the situation properly.
“I’m not going to go into any specific intelligence that we may have,” he said. We know this is a Chinese balloon, and it has the ability to maneuver, but I will leave it at that.
Dwight Eisenhower’s response to the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik-1: Insight from a political analyst at the University of Maryland
A political analyst at CNN is a professor of History and Public Affairs at the university. He is the author and editor of 25 books, including the New York Times best-seller, “Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Lies and Legends About Our Past” (Basic Books). Follow him on Twitter @julianzelizer. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.
Administration officials used cryptic descriptions to describe the three objects, with one said to be an octagonal object with strings hanging off it, sparking more confusion and questions of extraterrestrial activity (which the White House press secretary ruled out on Monday).
The administration has not given enough information to the critics who have argued that it has not explained its apparent policy shift towards aerial objects.
The challenge Biden faces is not new. American presidents have often struggled to strike the right balance between transparency and secrecy when dealing with national security issues.
Sometimes presidents want to avoid fueling hysteria. Certainly, this was President Dwight Eisenhower’s response when the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik-1 satellite on October 4, 1957. Eisenhower worked hard to contain fears about the military implications of the launch. Speaking to the press days later, Eisenhower downplayed any concerns by saying there was “no additional threat to the United States … they have put one small ball in the air.”
Eisenhower underestimated the emotional impact Sputnik would have on the public, however, and Democrats weaponized the moment, comparing it to Pearl Harbor and claiming the Republican administration was not doing enough in the Cold War.
But Eisenhower’s response reflected his general disposition when it came to foreign policy and national security, as Evan Thomas documented in his book, “Ike’s Bluff.” He wanted to do everything he could to avoid a nuclear conflict.
Even as congressional Democrats ramped up their rhetoric about an alleged “missile gap” attributed to administration policies, Eisenhower held the line on military spending, focusing instead on investment in research and secret U-2 reconnaissance flights.
Presidents have also held back information for strategic reasons. In October 1962, President John F. Kennedy was the first to reveal that Soviet missile sites were being built in Cuba. This allowed the US ambassador to the UN to publicly confront the Soviet ambassador and dramatically reveal concrete evidence of what the Soviets had undertaken. The moment was important, giving the US the upper hand in persuading other countries that the Soviets were to blame for the dangerous standoff.
Sometimes presidents try to refrain from making public statements in haste in order to avoid military provocations in order to adjust their position as a situation unfolds. While we valorize firm and decisive decision-making, sometimes being an effective president means being willing to learn and change as new facts and opportunities emerge.
President Ronald Reagan displayed a lot of flexibility and caution during negotiations with the soviet union as they eventually ended in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. It was not always easy moving through ups and downs over a two year period, including the need to prevent the right wing of his party from subverting progress. Reagan was accused of falling for a trap set by old Kremlin hard-liners and practicing the sort of appeasement that he built his career against.
Searching for the last known object in the sky: The case of the shooting of a Chinese spy balloon and three other unidentified objects
Biden’s White House speech to address the matter four days after the last known object was shot down comes after the president faced increasing pressure in Washington to be more transparent about the situation and his decision making as commander-in-chief.
“We don’t have any evidence that there have been a sudden increase of objects in the sky,” Biden said. “We have taken steps to narrow our radars and so we are seeing more of them though, which is a good thing.”
Biden ordered Sullivan to lead an inquiry into what happened after the U.S. shot down the Chinese balloon and three other objects.
Biden says the administration will establish an inventory of unpiloted objects above the U.S. airspace, use measures to improve the detection of these objects, and update rules and regulations for launching and maintaining objects.
Administration officials in the Pentagon, State Department, and intelligence community have told legislators on Capitol Hill about the initial Chinese spy balloon.
And officials had been wary of having the president speak publicly about the objects until more information was gathered about the three unidentified objects that were downed last weekend.
It was advised not to shoot it down over land by the military. It was the size of multiple school buses and it posed a risk to the people on the ground if it was shot down. We tracked it closely, analyzed it and learned more about how it works. We were able to protect the sites due to knowing where it was going. We waited until it was safely over water, which would not only protect civilians, but also enable us to recover substantial components for further analytics.”
Taiwan’s Xiamen spy balloon shot down over Alaska, Canada, and Lake Huron: A brief summary of the Biden administration’s briefing
The intelligence community is still looking at the incidences. They’re reporting to me daily and will continue the urgent efforts to do so and I will communicate that to the Congress,” Biden said.
In an interview with All Things Considered, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said she did not find the Biden administration’s all-Senate classified briefing “very informative.”
John Kirby told reporters that the National Security Council expects to have new guidance on how the government should treat aerial objects in the coming days.
Fighter pilots that flew past the objects before being shot down have had their visuals reviewed by the intelligence agencies because of the high speeds and small size of the largely stationary objects.
Kirby said Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan is conducting an interagency review and is likely to have “a set of parameters” for making decisions about how to handle objects shot down by US fighter jets.
There are three objects that were shot down over Alaska, the Yukon in Canada, and Lake Huron near Michigan, and the government is hoping to recover debris for forensic analysis. That could take some time to fully complete, said Jean-Pierre on Thursday, because of weather conditions.
The president defended his actions, saying he waited to shoot down the spy balloon until it was safely over water while later taking down the others without knowing what they were “out of an abundance of caution.” He said that he ordered his administration to come up with sharper rules to respond to future intrusions.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said that a Chinese weather balloon landed in one of the island’s outlying islands.
The ministry said in a statement that the balloon was carrying equipment for a state-owned electronics company.
Reached by phone, a publicity officer at the company, identified in the report as Taiyuan Wireless (Radio) First Factory Ltd., said it had provided electronics but had not built the balloon.
A company called Taiyuan was one of the companies that provided equipment to the China Meteorological Administration, according to the spokesman.
The balloon was likely among those launched daily to monitor weather and was probably set off from the coastal city of Xiamen with no fixed course, he said.
Its deflation was likely a natural outcome of it having reached maximum altitude of around 30,000 meters (almost 100,000 feet), Liu said. Such balloons regularly fly over the Taiwan Strait but have only recently begun to draw attention, he said.
Taiwan’s diplomatic and military ties, and the discovery of an unknown aerial object in the wake of the detection of a Chinese spy balloon
Information on the equipment was written in the simplified Chinese characters used on the mainland rather than the traditional on Taiwan, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said.
China frequently sends military aircraft and warships across the middle line of the Taiwan Strait. That has prompted Taiwan to boost military purchases from the U.S., expand domestic production of local planes, submarines and fighting ships, and extend compulsory military service for all males.
Washington is Taiwan’s closest military and diplomatic ally, despite a lack of formal ties, which were cut in 1979. Beijing protests strongly over all contacts between the island and the U.S., but its aggressive diplomacy has helped build strong bipartisan support for Taipei on Capitol Hill.
President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that the U.S. is developing sharper rules for tracking and possibly shooting down unknown aerial objects in the wake of the discovery of a suspected Chinese spy balloon.