Commentary
For about three years, China has been using stratospheric balloons to harass our allies and now to violate United States territory, sparking shock among Americans and tragicomic indecision by the Biden administration.
But the larger issue is that these balloons signal a new phase in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ambition to achieve political-military hegemony.
Americans reacted with justified outrage on Feb. 1, when the residents of Billings, Montana, witnessed the U.S. Air Force intercepting a massive 120-foot balloon with a visible large solar-powered payload, soon identified as Chinese.
Though China’s foreign ministry on Feb. 3 claimed it was a “civilian” balloon for “meteorological” or weather missions, “with limited self-steering” capability and was blown off course, it had the ability to deliberately maneuver to near Montana’s Malmstrom Air Force Base (AFB), host of 150 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and Wyoming’s Warren AFB, host to another 150 ICBMs….