Víctor Ângelo considers that the balloon is a “strange” way for China to carry out espionage, but believes that it was a test of the defense of the United States of America and that the Americans should try to capture it to understand “what it is about”. for”.
“The United States will try to capture this globe. I think the concern right now is not to shoot it down, but to try to capture it, because it’s critical that you understand exactly what this balloon is made of and what it’s for. Destroying it would be the last hypothesis. The most interesting hypothesis for the American armed forces is to try to capture this globe as intact as possible”, explains the former United Nations Assistant Secretary General.
For Víctor Ângelo, this balloon was “a test of the defensive and surveillance capacity of the United States” which is “very important, because then the Chinese can draw conclusions about future operations.”
And the United States passed that test? “I would say that they took a while to pass, but I would also say – and there I have no doubt – that this balloon will give the United States an exceptional increase in the ability to observe and monitor airspace.”
The former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations regrets that this occurred “at the moment when the US Secretary of State was about to leave for China and when China itself had changed its policy towards the US, in a sense of rapprochement” . Still, the shape is strange.
“Today spying is no longer done with balloons, spying is done with special planes. There are planes that constantly fly over the airspace of different countries and collect all kinds of information, all kinds of communications, and all kinds of images. the one with the balloon is very strange. It’s almost like going back 45 years, but you don’t know exactly what it is,” he considers, although he guarantees that it is undoubtedly “an abusive interference in US airspace, especially in an extremely sensitive area, because it is the area where they have a series of bases with special missiles”.
But it does not stop: “China has information gathering systems everywhere. In Portugal, in all the countries of the European Union and practically everywhere. China has an exceptional machine for collecting and analyzing information. This will continue. It is part of China’s foreign policy. and security policy and I don’t see any difference compared to the past, quite the opposite”.
The United States postponed a visit to China by its chief diplomat, Antony Blinken, due to the detection of a Chinese balloon flying over sensitive parts of the country.
Blinken was scheduled to visit Beijing on Sunday and Monday and had a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on his agenda.
Source: TSF
