Opinions

OPINION: Will China’s surveillance balloon be remembered as Biden’s Sputnik or U-2 moment?

The recent transit of U.S. airspace and shooting down of China’s surveillance balloon reminds us of two incidents that occurred during President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration. The first is the Soviet’s orbiting the first human-made, earth-orbiting satellite in 1957. The second is the Soviet’s shooting down a U-2 surveillance plane in their airspace in 1960.

The Soviet Union’s government heralded the launch of Sputnik as a demonstration of the technical and moral superiority of socialism over capitalism and the West. The satellite, which beeped away as it crossed over the U.S. states in the Lower 48 and other countries, caught our government unprepared.

Events that followed led to an examination of many aspects of American life and government policy. Americans felt a little less secure from potential threats from the high frontier. Public education came under greater scrutiny. Federal funding to higher education, especially for science and technology, increased dramatically. The event kickstarted the nascent American space program, which culminated in the Apollo 11 lunar landing in 1969.

In May 1960, a U-2 airplane operating under the auspices of the Central Intelligence Agency was shot down by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. Like the Chinese balloon, the U-2 mission was initially described as a routine weather surveillance flight which had drifted into Soviet airspace due to systems failure.

That explanation was abandoned when the Soviets announced that the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, had survived and portions of wreckage recovered. The U-2 had indeed been on an intelligence gathering mission, authorized by President Eisenhower. As a result of the incident, a summit between President Eisenhower and Soviet leader Khrushchev was cancelled and international tensions increased.

The incident with China’s surveillance balloon last week has many parallels to these two events. We seem have been caught off guard to the presence of the surveillance, which is strange considering the publicity given to the U.S. Air Force intercept of Russian manned bombers heading toward Alaska’s arctic airspace.

The balloon incident caused the postponement of a visit to China by the U.S. secretary of state. Tensions have been steadily rising between the U.S. and China, as evidenced by reaction to the recent memo of U.S. Air Mobility Command (AMC), Gen. Mike Minihan, which predicted war with China by 2025.

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Some have expressed surprise that China would rely on seemingly antiquated methods for gathering intelligence. Ironically, such aerial surveillance was replaced by Earth satellite surveillance developed in the aftermath of Sputnik and the U-2.

This incident could be President Joe Biden’s Sputnik and U-2 moment. President Eisenhower navigated his two moments successfully. I suppose history will judge if President Biden did the same.

James Lima is a longtime Anchorage resident.

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