President Joe Biden’s critics say he has ushered in an era of American weakness that has made the nation more vulnerable to attack from adversaries around the world — most notably China.
In the wake of that nation’s provocative spy balloon flight across the continental United States, the White House’s timid response was roundly condemned as insufficient. Now, one expert in Chinese affairs is warning that a similar situation in the future could indirectly lead to war, suggesting that such a scenario would play into China’s hands.
“We have to be ready for conflict at any time,” advised Gordon Chang during a recent Newsmax TV interview. “And it’s not just [Chinese leader] Xin Jinping waking up and saying, ‘I want to invade Taiwan’ or do something, it’s the possibility of those dangerous intercepts that China is causing in the South China Sea and East China Sea — one of them leads to an accident that leads to death.”
Oval Office ‘feebleness’ and CCP sympathizers allow Xi to drive a wedge between US and Europe: Gordon Chang https://t.co/0D9ImIlheV
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 12, 2023
He went on to describe an “accidental conflict” as a likely cause for a war involving China.
“They want to kill,” he said. “They know better, but they really want to go to war.”
Chang mentioned the spy balloon that flew over the U.S., describing it as “a show of utter disrespect” that signaled a larger mission.
“And so really what we have is a Chinese regime that thinks the U.S. is no longer a factor,” he concluded. “That’s going to, I think, encourage them to do something really, really destructive.”
He explained that the recent balloon was just the latest in a string of “stunning” Chinese provocations, pointing his finger at Biden and others in senior governmental roles for allowing the situation to deteriorate so far.
“It’s also the senior leadership of the Pentagon, both in uniform and civilians who don’t understand the nature of the challenge from China,” Chang added. “And therefore they’re not taking the steps that they need to defend us with urgency. So this is a failure in the Pentagon as well as in the Oval Office.”
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) acknowledged that the order to shoot down the Chinese balloon “was the right thing to do,” but he said that it was too little, too late.
He asserted Biden “allowed a full week for the Chinese to conduct spying operations over the United States, over sensitive military installations, exposing not just photographs but the potential of intercepted communications,” adding: “More broadly, I think this entire episode telegraphed weakness to Xi and the Chinese government.”
