Thread by @paul_scharre

One of the challenging things about international crises like the #balloon is how much ambiguity there can be about the drivers of a state’s actions.

We can see the balloon, but what does it *mean* about China’s intentions?

There are many plausible explanations:

THREAD

(A) Intentional – Everything is going exactly as Xi intended. He wanted to agitate Washington and spike the Blinken visit. (Seems unlikely)

(B) Miscalculation – Balloon is exactly where Xi wants it to be, but they misjudged Washington’s response. (Most likely scenario?)

(C) Unauthorized – Balloon flight is an intentional act by a Chinese official, but Xi himself was not fully aware or properly briefed. Balloon flight does not necessarily represent Xi’s intentions. (Definitely possible)

(D) Accident – Balloon blew off course. The PRC did not intend to have a balloon floating over central U.S. right before Blinken’s visit. Maybe they wanted it to fly *near* the U.S. but not cross into U.S. airspace. (Could be)

There are even combinations of these that are plausible: Perhaps the PRC meant the balloon to be *near* the U.S. but Xi was not fully aware, it drifted off course, and CCP leadership didn’t anticipate the severity of the U.S. reaction if the balloon crossed into U.S. territory

[To be clear, I’m not saying that’s what occurred, but it’s a possible explanation.]

The problem is that all of these scenarios are possible, and they indicate very different things about Chinese intentions.

And *all* of these kinds of things have happened in crises in the past.

States miscalculate all the time, making intentional provocations/escalations but misjudging how others will respond. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is one of the starkest recent examples of such a blunder.

The Cuban Missile crisis included all sorts of messy situations where the “friction” of military operations challenged U.S. and Soviet leaders’ ability to send clear messages to one another about their intentions.

On October 26th, ten days into the Cuban Missile crisis, authorities at Vandenberg Air Force base carried out a scheduled test launch of an Atlas ICBM without first checking with the White House.

On October 27th, a U-2 flying over the Arctic Circle accidentally strayed into Soviet territory.

Also on October 27th, an American U-2 surveillance plane was shot down while flying over Cuba, despite orders by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev not to fire on U.S. surveillance aircraft. (The missile appears to have been fired by Cuban forces on Fidel Castro’s orders.)

Soviet and American leaders could not know for certain whether these incidents were intentional signals by the adversary to escalate or individual units acting on their own. Or just plain accidents.

A similar ambiguity about Xi’s intentions exists today, at least based on publicly available information.

Complicating this is the fact that the White House must respond to domestic political pressures which are (1) distorted by point-scoring and politicians trying to out-hawk each other, and (2) the fact that the public may be ignorant about important details that change the picture

Let’s say, for example, that the U.S. intel community had good intel that made clear that the balloon flight was an unauthorized action or an accident. The White House couldn’t necessarily *say* that publicly.

One of the things the #balloon incident highlights is just how dangerous crises can be.

The combination of ambiguity over state intentions, imperfect control over their armed forces, mutual suspicion, and domestic political pressures to not be seen as weak -- including by other domestic political actors -- creates a volatile brew.

What would the #balloon crisis look like if there was a loss of life? How much more intense would the domestic political pressures on the White House be for a forceful response?