In October 2006, the US were sailing a Naval Supercarrier Group through the East China Sea between Taiwan and Japan. This is the naval equivalent of the full starting 15 of the Kerry senior football team, lined out in the classic 3-3-2-3-3 formation, taking a stroll around Castlebar, Mayo all in a show of strength to flex their muscles and spook the poor lads from Mayo.
With the aircraft carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk, being the most important center-piece of the group, it is protected by an assortment of mean looking ships around it, a range of circling aircraft in the sky above and a collection of submarines lurking below. As far as the confident Americans were concerned, this strategic formation was impenetrable. Unbeknownst, amongst the chants of “USA, USA!!” aboard the vessels, the Chinese were on the prowl. A Chinese attack submarine surfaced nearby and well within torpedo range of landing some significant strikes on the jewel of the crown of the US fleet – the aircraft carrier.
Thankfully, no torpedoes were launched. But there was no need – the message was loud and clear. The Americans were equally shocked, embarrassed and pissed off. To put this into perspective, popping your head up inside this range of the US Supercarrier Group, is akin to Pat McDonagh of Supermac’s hiding in a cupboard in the board room of McDonald’s headquarters and casually revealing himself after listening into the last hour of McDonald’s corporate strategy.
This embarrassing episode to the Americans was a massive wake up call. The Americans came to realize the first Cold War with the Soviets was well over, but a new Cold War with China was just over the horizon.
As Russia has made evident by getting bogged down in a war of attrition in Ukraine, conventional warfare is highly inefficient. The human capital, political capital and fiscal capital required to go man-to-man, ship-to-ship, aircraft-to-aircraft is too high of price to pay.
However, saying this, conventional warfare will never go away and will continue to take place in under developed countries such as Ukraine, areas in the Middle East and countries in Africa. The capital expenditure here can be managed and stomached by the superpowers.
For one superpower to go toe-to-toe with another superpower would have dire circumstances. Globalization has led to the world economies being too interconnected for one huge country to launch a full scale war of another huge country.
This was made evident after WWII when the US and the Soviets begun the Cold War - an era of a weird military dance where each shuffled around awkwardly, while trying to get a peak under the dress of their opposite number.
As the saying goes – history has a habit of repeating itself. The events of the last week are erringly similar to events during the Cold War. But make no mistake, the Chinese spy balloons floating over the US and Canada are not a sign that a new Cold War has begun – they are a sign that the new Cold War is well and truly underway.
The idea of announcing “we are at war” in the modern, social media filled world is not an avenue any political leader wants to go down. Even the head-the-ball Putin knows this, as he has wholeheartedly refuted the idea that his war on Ukraine is a war, instead opting for the phrase, “Special Military Operation”.
Announcing a war in today’s world would cause mass hysteria at home. Protests would erupt, public services would break down, campaigns would spring up everywhere calling for the removal of the leader from office. Biden and Xi can do as many photo ops as the world likes - shaking hands, exchanging gifts or maybe even a sneaky shift. But behind the curtains and under the sheets, there is all-out war.
The idea of launching balloons at your enemies is something that does sound quite far-fetched and inefficient. However, this method of attack is, to-date, the only successful method used by a foreign nation to kill an American on American soil.
In 1944, at the height of WWII, the Japanese and the US were clearly not the best of friends. With all Japanese men busy at war, the many women back home were instructed to start making paper-mâché balloons. In a stunt which would give a member of the IRA the horn, they attached 10kg bombs to these balloons and set about letting them float across the Pacific Ocean towards America.
Over 9,000 of these so called “Fu-Go” balloon-bombs were launched from Japan. Carried by the East-to-West air current, many were never seen again, but two hit their mark.
One landed in Oregon, where it exploded and killed a group of schoolchildren along with a Reverend and his wife.
The second blew up the main power line that led into a nuclear reactor. As a weird fun-fact; this was the same nuclear reactor that actually went on to produce the stuff that went into creating the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Spooky coincidence, I know.
At the time, with the lack of social media, the US had an easy job of keeping all this quiet. Japan had no idea if any of their balloon-bombs were successful. If the story broke, paranoia among Americans would run-wild.
China has clearly spent some time in the history books and decided on utilizing low cost, low technology assets to prod at the high cost, high technology US military.
If the Chinese were hoping to incite a sense of helplessness and paranoia among the US citizens, they may think again. In an unlikely turn of events, this latest episode of espionage has united both Democrats and Republicans. Both pollical sides are sharing a unified stance against such incursions.
There is a huge cultural difference the Chinese did not account for - Americans frickin’ love shooting things out of the sky. Even if each missile launched cost the US tax payer over $400,000, and even if one of the missiles they shot somehow missed the slow moving balloon (the US military has so far been quiet about where the missed rocket landed), that’s the price of freedom, baby.
Around the time the Japanese were launching balloons at the Americans during WWII, a US military ship was sailing during the night and spotted what it thought was a Japanese balloon. Without much hesitation, the Americans unloaded 300 rounds at their target. With their bullets falling far short of the target, they continued aiming higher and higher. After continued adjustments to their aiming, consecutive missing and plenty of scratching of the heads, the navigator came down and let the lads know that what they were shooting at was not in fact a Japanese balloon – it was the planet Venus.
From a Chinese point of view, they likely knew that one day their balloons would be spotted and shot down. This may be exactly what they were hoping for. The destruction of a Chinese asset, albeit a claimed harmless “weather balloon”, gives them grounds to retaliate. China can now claim that America threw the first punch and so they are well within their right to swing back.
With all-time records being set on military and defense spending, it is clear the superpowers are not willing to give a geopolitical inch to their opposing side. The last decade has seen governments opting for “off-balance sheet” solutions. Subcontracting military work to private companies is a handy way to keep public scrutiny away from governments through plausible deniability along with circumventing sovereign debt limits.
The “Wagner Group” is a probably the most infamous private army right now working as Russia’s wooden spoon. There are plenty of other contractors that exist as extensions of both China and the US currently in operation all over Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
Keeping conflict hidden from the public creates an Invisible War. Every now and then we will get a peak at what is going on behind the scenes.
For example, the British Government recently had to dismantle their government cars “down to the last nut and bolt” and found Chinese SIM cards hidden to track location data. This has now led other governments such as Ireland’s to start thinking twice about using Chinese manufactured CCTV cameras in their own government buildings.
The last Cold War continued for over 40 years - these are no slow affairs.
Welcome to Cold War II – things are going to get weird from here.