Mob diplomacy

• Published date: 05 March 2023
• Publication title: The Korea Times

Is sound, forward-looking foreign policy still possible? Talking to the statesmen, diplomats, intelligence operatives, and scholars gathered at the Munich Security Conference last week, I had my doubts.

Consider U.S.-China relations. It was only a month ago that China's vice premier, Liu He, gave a conciliatory speech that some observers saw as part of a charm offensive aimed at the West. After that, many hoped that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's previously planned trip to China this month would reduce tensions further, building on Liu's own recent meeting with Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, as well as Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden's tete-a-tete in Bali in November.

It is precisely because they are leaning into a souped-up competition that both sides seemed eager to put a ceiling on their rivalry, recognizing that more frequent contact is needed to guard against misunderstandings or accidental escalations. But then came the great Chinese balloon chase, which ended any notions of detente. As the large dirigible drifted across the United States, the Biden administration tried to hold its nerve; but public opinion soon exerted itself on national-security decision-making.

On television, Twitter, and other media channels, Biden's critics interpreted his restraint as weakness. Soon enough, Blinken's trip to Beijing was postponed. The U.S. military downed the balloon a week after it appeared, then went on to destroy three more unidentified objects in U.S. airspace ? all of which were later deemed most likely to have been "benign." In response, Chinese defense officials reportedly refused to take calls from their U.S. counterparts.

The U.S. was not acting on intelligence of an imminent threat. There are thousands of balloons in the air on any given day, and the U.S. intelligence community agreed that the offending object posed no physical threat. But the Biden administration felt the need to appear strong in the eyes of the American public, and now the U.S.-China relationship is on even shakier ground than it was before.

The downing of the balloon evokes George Orwell's poignant description of shooting an elephant in Burma in the 1920s. The young Orwell is handed a rifle and told to hunt down a rogue elephant, only to find that the animal is actually quite harmless. Nonetheless, he feels compelled to shoot it in order to appear decisive before the locals. "My whole life, every white man's life in the East," he later...