Arthur Cyr: The Reds’ Balloons: How dangerous is China?

“The Red Balloon” is the title of a classic popular film from France that can serve as a metaphor for the alleged Chinese balloon menace. This whimsical fantasy of a boy and his balloon appeals to our need for companionship and our urge to escape routine existence, a desire hardly limited to children.

The film appeared in 1956, during constant government instability in France. The previous decade witnessed stunning military defeat by Nazi Germany, then four years of humiliating, brutal occupation. The appeal of escapist fantasy in those circumstances is fully understandable.

Sudden media obsession with Beijing balloons is not fantasy, but, combined with occasional professional reporting, an opportunity for stratospheric speculation, and making money.

Facts, as opposed to speculation, include the violation of North American airspace by a sizable lighter-than-air craft from China. The vessel was about as large as a small car. But what distinctive, special intel could be gathered by such primitive means?

After drifting across the United States, military officers under orders from President Biden terminated the balloon’s leisurely flight. A state-of-the-art F-22 jet fighter shot down the balloon off the coast of South Carolina.

Now, recalibrated surveillance tools seek out balloons. One shot down in Alaska likely was a project of balloon hobbyists in Illinois.

Predictably, Beijing has vocally protested the military response to the incident. Their official explanation is that the craft was pursuing an innocent meteorological mission and blew off course.

To be sure, balloons have a long, though uneven, history of military uses. These include surveillance and gathering terrain information, useful in making maps, and aerial attack.

Late in the 18th century in France, entrepreneurial brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier developed a working balloon, and in 1783 there was the first documented human ascent in a piloted lighter-than-air craft. The Montgolfier family was in the paper business, and the new invention proved extremely useful in map-making, along with providing publicity that could only aid profits.

Six years later, the French Revolution began. This ongoing conflict brought the first recorded use of balloons for military purposes, primarily reconnoitering and tracking enemy operations.

The United States Civil War of 1861 to 1865 brought significant expansion of balloons used for military missions. President Abraham Lincoln demonstrated relentless interest in exploiting existing technologies, notably the railroad and the telegraph, and developing new ones. Better firearms were a constant preoccupation.

Lincoln is the only U.S. president to hold a patent, Patent Number 6469, issued in 1849 for a device to lift boats over river obstructions. The device was never manufactured.

Professor Thaddeus Lowe, an inveterate inventor of the time, persuaded President Lincoln to implement a military balloon program. His presentation included describing by telegraph the view of Washington D.C. from a balloon.

Lincoln created the Union Army Balloon Corps in 1861, with Lowe in charge. Opposition from traditional officers forced disbanding the Corps two years later.

In 1899 and 1907, disarmament conferences convened at The Hague in the Netherlands. Balloons were included. There was no mention of airplanes.

Balloons were used for both offense and defense in both World War I and World War II, and were a focus of planning between the wars, but quickly became marginal.

Uncertainty clouds Beijing balloon efforts. Beneath ubiquitous President-for-Life Xi Jinping, China now is in economic and social turmoil.

The odd balloons may be one indicator of this. Above all, our leaders and the rest of us must remain firmly grounded.

Avoid fantasies.

— Arthur I. Cyr is author of “After the Cold War” (NYU Press and Palgrave/Macmillan). Contact acyr@carthage.edu.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Arthur Cyr: The Reds’ Balloons: How dangerous is China?