(New York) After several days of almost complete silence on the flying machines that everyone has talked about, Joe Biden finally spoke about it in turn on Thursday. Addressing the American nation from the White House, he tried to put out at least one of the two fires caused by these intrusions into the North American sky, the one that concerns domestic politics.
The other fire, which threatens relations between the United States and China, will have to be the subject of a separate approach, according to the American president. The latter announced his intention to meet soon with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to denounce the violation of American airspace by the Chinese balloon which flew for several days above his country.
Throughout this episode, the United States and China have confirmed their difficulty in discerning their respective intentions, a situation which arises at the very time when the two military and economic powers were trying to improve their relations.
Until Thursday, Joe Biden had made no direct or substantive comment regarding the Chinese balloon or the other three craft that were also shot down.
During a brief speech, he first tried to reassure Americans about the benign nature, at first sight, of these three devices.
“The current view of the intelligence community is that these three objects were most likely balloons linked to private companies, recreational or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research,” the chief of the White House.
He added that there was no evidence of a sudden increase in the number of objects in the sky. “We are now simply seeing more of them, in part thanks to the steps we have taken to improve our radars,” he said, while claiming to have given the green light to the destruction of the devices “out of an excess of caution” .
“I don’t apologize”
Critics of the Biden administration had lamented its lack of transparency regarding the nature of the downed devices and called for new guidelines on how to handle similar situations in the future. The President announced three steps in this direction, the first being the creation of a better inventory of unmanned aerial objects in space above American territory.
He also rejected criticism, both Republican and Democratic, on the way he handled the affair of the Chinese balloon, shot down on February 4 off South Carolina after flying over American territory for several days.
“I hope we will get to the bottom of this case. But I don’t apologize for knocking that ball down,” Joe Biden said.
When it came time to discuss the other fire caused by the Chinese balloon, the president reiterated that the United States was seeking “competition, not conflict” with China. “We are not looking for a new cold war,” he said.
Calculation error
Joe Biden will have the opportunity to repeat this message during his eventual interview with Xi Jinping. In the meantime, officials from his administration presented to some media, on condition of anonymity, a more detailed version of the events that led to the destruction of the Chinese balloon.
This version suggests that the Chinese leadership misjudged how the United States would react to the violation of its airspace.
According to reports published by the New York Times and the washington postamong other things, US intelligence and the military tracked the balloon’s trajectory as soon as it took off from Hainan, an island in southern China.
The trajectory was to take the balloon over a US territory, Guam, and a US state, Hawaii, located in the Pacific, where China has conducted brief surveillance operations in the past, US sources say. .
However, the trajectory of the ball suddenly changed, taking an unexpected turn to the north. This shift leads Americans to believe that China was not planning to penetrate the heart of the United States with its balloon, over which its operators had limited control. These, however, could have destroyed it in mid-flight before it entered American airspace.
China did nothing
Never mind: according to the American story, China remained insensitive to an approach made by the two most senior diplomats of the United States – Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his deputy, Wendy Sherman – to his government, on 1er last February. The message from Mr. Blinken and Mr.me Sherman to the Chinese basically boiled down to this: “Do something with your ball. »
China did nothing, letting the ball continue its course. More than 24 hours later, and half a day after the Pentagon confirmed the presence of the balloon in US airspace, China privately informed the US administration that the balloon was only a civilian craft. unimportant that had deviated from its course. She would later repeat this message in public.
The Biden administration reacted by announcing the cancellation of Antony Blinken’s stay in China.
After the political storm caused in the United States by its balloon, China sent another private message to the Biden administration, advising it that it would try to speed up the course of the craft to get it out of the way faster. American airspace.
This message was transmitted as the balloon was about to fly over the Atlantic Ocean, where it was shot down.
Since then, China has multiplied the accusations against the United States, claiming that they themselves sent surveillance balloons into Chinese airspace, particularly over Tibet and Xinjiang.
China scholars see the accusations as an effort by Beijing to deflect criticism of its surveillance balloons.
Mr. Biden’s appeal to Mr. Xi will not come too soon.