Analysis: US-China balloon crisis brings echoes of the Cold War

The balloon crisis between the United States and China escalates day after day, bringing with it echoes of the first edition of the Cold War between the superpowers, which pitted Washington against Moscow from 1945 to 1991.

The Americans were first to locate and intercept an alleged Chinese spy balloon wandering over their territory on the 4th, dropping another three suspicious objects from Friday (10) to here. Now, Beijing recalls that its airspace was violated by similar floaters more than ten times last year.

Both sides deny the obvious: the spying of rivals is something as old as the war itself, and the crisis gains drama for ramming the rapprochement that was underway between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden, at the initiative of the Chinese. The balloons fit like a glove for the anti-Beijing wings in Washington.

The battlefield of this specific type of spy action harks back to the Cold War, resumed in version 2.0 in 2017. It is the northern region of the planet, close to the Arctic, the front line of US defense as it is the shortest path to bombers or intercontinental missiles with nuclear warheads.

From 1957 to 1993, an early warning radar line ran from Alaska to Iceland, being replaced by a more effective set concentrated only on the American continent, with 4,800 km of extension and 15 long-range radar stations, and 39 of short. It is jointly operated by the US and Canada, united in the Norad (North American Aerospace Defense Command) system. Hence, one of the suspicious objects was shot down over Yukon, Canadian territory, by an American F-22 Raptor fighter.

In addition to the risk of attack, spy raids were common from side to side, leading to serious incidents such as the downing of an American U2 plane over the Soviet Union in 1960. The Communists, of course, had their defense system.

Throughout the Cold War, proposals to reduce the danger were made, culminating in a 1992 agreement, the Open Skies, in which 34 countries, Russia and the USA included, allowed periodic reconnaissance flights of rival planes, establishing mutual trust that no one would be preparing an imminent action.

Donald Trump, the same president who launched Cold War 2.0 to contain China’s rise in fields ranging from foreign trade to Hong Kong autonomy, saw fit to withdraw the US from the pact in 2020, accusing the Russians of violating it.

The lack of rules helps to create uncertainties, which are everywhere: the latest atomic arms control agreement, Novo Start, is stuck because there are no inspections of nuclear sites in Russia by Americans due to the War in Ukraine.

The balloon crisis also evokes the paranoia that was demonstrated in periodic outbreaks in the Cold War. The now repeated sightings find parallels in anti-communism in the US in the 1950s.

Naturally, given the digital nature of current times, the fever should pass quickly, without greater effects on the popular imagination as in the past —the idea that the Soviets were infiltrating American society to subvert it was widespread, generating the cancellation of suspects of communist sympathy when that word was not even used.

The fear was so widespread that it generated a phenomenon that has similarities with that of the overthrow of balloons: that of flying saucers. The succession of UFO sightings (Unidentified Flying Object) gained an air of crisis in the 1950s, and the US Air Force created a project to study them, the Blue Book.

From 1952 to 1969, the initiative collected and analyzed hundreds of apparitions. There have always been inconclusive or poorly explained cases, as the same Air Force and NASA have recently recorded, but the idea disseminated by Hollywood of an imminent war of the worlds had more to do with exploiting Americans’ fear of being attacked by the Soviets.

Not even Brazil escaped the wave in the last century, and it will not be surprising if now some balloon accused of spying for Beijing appears, say, over the Amazon. But the fact is that the foam of political dispute only hides the reality: countries spy on each other.