© EYEPRESS via Reuters Connect/TASS

The incident with a balloon floating over US bases where global strike strategic missiles are located, has made the entire US public and media "groggy", as boxers put it.

Whatever one might say, Brother Johnathan got really concerned that the balloon could have carried a dangerous explosive cargo, including a "dirty bomb". Therefore, the US military carefully monitored its movement over the most "interesting" areas.

While the US military were choosing the next move to avoid damage, the press was drowning in assumptions about what was there flying unhindered over America, a country separated from the rest of the world by two oceans.

Today, the fairy tale about US territories being "unattainable for enemy attacks" has turned deficient. This might have caused the Americans to recollect a phrase by one of the best Hollywood comedians John Kerry: "In America you have a right to be stupid," and to start reconsidering their mindset.

America found itself in a state of mind similar to the panic that broke out following Japan’s air strike on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, when the United States entered World War II. Let’s quote a passage from Stratfor’s The Geopolitics of the United States: "... Americans do not treasure the “good times” because they see growth and security as the normal state of affairs… But not everything goes right all the time. What happens when something goes wrong, when the rest of the world reaches out and touches the Americans on something other than Americaʼs terms? When one is convinced that things can, will and should continually improve, the shock of negative developments or foreign interaction is palpable. Mania becomes depression and arrogance turns into panic ".

The present-day US was panic-stricken, generating thousands of emotional posts on the social media, photos and videos of the balloon. And it also felt confused by the fact that the valiant US Air Force is doing nothing at all. It was inappropriate to ask about the air defenses either…Are there any at all? Do you remember the episode from Winnie the Pooh, when the bear took off on a balloon? This image became immediately popular among the public in an attempt to drown out panic fear.

People got so excited during the "balloon hunt" that they even suggested creating a Twitter account for the gas bag featuring notes like: "Flying over Montana. Cheers to all the workers of Oklahoma, Texa and Michigan." And after being shot down by the American Air Force, it would have posted something like: "I am leaving but I’ll be back." As people made fun, the balloon was flying over the United States from northwest to southeast, as if on a controlled route, humming a song about the country’s many forests, fields, and rivers.

Nevertheless, one has to analyze the situation in a more serious way. After all, the appearance of this balloon, which – the Chinese swear – is a weather one which suddenly crossed the Pacific to enter the US airspace (the altitude was 30 thousand meters), entailed cancellation of strategic talks between the US and China. After the balloon was shot down, US Secretary of State Blinken refused to fly to the Celestial Empire.

A day before, he was figuring out whom to meet with in Beijing, up to Comrade Xi, but the “Made in China” balloon interrupted the plans. From this perspective it is especially interesting to look at what has happened.

Let's formulate a few thesial conclusions from this whole story.

First. The Americans did not hesitate to cancel their visit to China, which means that Blinken’s negotiations with Xi would have expectedly ended in vain for them. And the US goal is clear and understandable – to break the hardening Russia-China tandem. In this light, the visit would have been surely ineffective.

Second. The closely intertwined economies of the United States and China are a good reason not to lose the track of highest-level political contacts. Elements of trade and economic cooperation such as huge trade turnover and American production massively transferred to China over the last decades, are estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars. But the formula "politics is a concentrated expression of economics" does not work here anymore! Political motives outweigh economic benefits. As a result, business becomes subordinate to political structures that previously defended the financial and economic interests of their companies. At the current break of epochs, politics have begun to dominate the economy. Suffice it to look at the European Union harming both its businesses and employees for the sake of NATO's political interests, weakening the former and raising protests with the latter. In other words, the importance of economic cooperation between the two largest trading partners – the United States and China – is not Washington’s primary concern. The White House seems to have zero ambitions to proceed with its political dialogue with Beijing.

Third. NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg has recently appeared in China’s neighboring South Korea to persuade its leadership to support the bloc’s policy against Russia. Plus, the Americans themselves ponder the issue of placing their medium-range missiles in the Japanese territory next to China. This military focus clearly demonstrates Washington’s intention to proceed from negotiating with the Chinese to its favorite intimidation and border threats option. Being far away from the theater of military operations, the United States is quite comfortable about posing military threats just a stone's throw from Russia or China.

These ambitious plans have been frustrated by the unexpected appearance of a Chinese balloon right above the careless Americans’ heads, with panic caused by the inaction of local air defenses (are there any at all?). No one knew the balloon’s mission – what if it was carrying a bomb, and shooting it down wouldn’t be worth the effort? These fears made the Americans wait until the air bag reached the Atlantic Ocean, and finally get away with it.

By this logic, any skyhook of the kind may well appear unhindered in US skies, though next time not research but military one. And this idea of a balloon “having something dangerous on board, which makes it is extremely dangerous to shoot it down as it can suddenly explode”, may materialize at any aggravation period beloved of American military and political leadership but now fraught with unpredictable consequences.

Brother Johnathan saw his vulnerability at home, and the rest of the world got proof that the United States is even exposed to the most primitive delivery means – what if a gazillion of such balloons arrives, with no one knowing what they have on board?

US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg mumbled something about Washington’s possible sanctions against Beijing because of the Chinese balloon: "The US has made clear this is an unacceptable intrusion into American sovereignty and I think you can expect that any further developments will be… appropriate in response to what happened."

Well, let's see what else America will come up with, but in the meantime, let's recollect Jules Verne’s Five Weeks in a Balloon novel (1863). Among other things, it features the following lines: "[The village’s] entire population had assembled in crowds, and were yelling with anger and fear, at the same time vainly directing their arrows against this monster of the air that swept along so majestically away above all their powerless fury." Doesn’t that ring any bells? In the eyes of the world, present-day Americans are just the same tribals from the book.

Have you heard the end of the story, featuring the cost of shooting down the notorious balloon for the US budget? One of the American Internet-forums reads the following: "America used a $400,000 missile fired from a $216,000,000 fighter jet to shoot down a weather balloon. We complectly fucked up.