President Joe Biden sought to ease concerns about an alleged Chinese spy balloon and shootdowns of three other objects over the U.S. in recent weeks, saying he intends to speak with President Xi Jinping to defuse tensions fanned by the uproar.
Biden said Thursday that intelligence agencies have no indication the three other downed objects were foreign surveillance aircraft but also promised new guidelines designed to secure U.S. airspace. He also vowed to “responsibly manage” competition with China “so that it doesn’t veer into conflict.”
Read More: Here’s Everything We Know About ‘Unidentified Objects’ Shot Down Over the U.S. And Canada
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“We’re not looking for a new Cold War, but I make no apologies, and we will compete,” Biden said in remarks at the White House, his first extended effort to publicly address the episode.
Floating the prospect of a Biden-Xi call underscored the seriousness of the White House efforts to calm the relationship with Beijing. While Biden didn’t say when he planned to speak to Xi, they have done so before at times of heightened tension, including a call that lasted more than two hours when they confronted each other over Taiwan last July. They also met in Bali in November.
Bipartisan Pressure
Biden has faced bipartisan pressure in Congress to provide Americans with more information about the alleged Chinese spy balloon that was downed by a U.S. fighter jet on Feb. 4 after crossing the U.S. mainland, as well as three other unidentified objects that were shot out of the skies over Alaska, Canada and Michigan in the following days.
The president said those objects weren’t related to the balloon incident and were likely tied to commercial or research ventures. But he added that the administration hasn’t determined definitively what they are because the debris hasn’t yet been recovered. He said he acted “out of an abundance of caution” in downing the other mystery objects.
“We don’t have any evidence that there has been a sudden increase in number of objects in the sky,” Biden said. Rather, he said the U.S. military and civil aviation authorities have spotted more objects after tuning radar systems to be more sensitive following the Chinese balloon’s cross-country trip.
Biden sought to defend his handling of the balloon incident in response to Republicans who said he was too slow to act as well as denunciations from the Chinese government. He said the downing of the balloon had sent “a clear message” that violations of U.S. sovereignty are “unacceptable.”
“I hope we are going to get to the bottom of this, but I make no apologies for taking down that balloon,” Biden said.
Read More: China and the U.S. Are at Odds Over a Balloon. Why Much of Asia Isn’t Blowing Up About It
New parameters Biden directed the government to create are intended to establish a better inventory of unmanned airborne objects and implement measures to better detect man-made objects in U.S. airspace. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will also work with other nations to establish global norms on launching those devices and securing high-altitude spaces.
Biden’s address came before he leaves the country for a Feb. 20 trip to Poland around the one-year mark of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The White House has faced calls from Republicans and Democrats in Congress to provide more information to lawmakers and the public. The administration has provided closed-door briefings to members on Capitol Hill, but lawmakers have said the information should be public and that officials should provide more of it. Much of what Biden said on Thursday repeated details shared by other U.S. officials in recent days.
Defusing Tensions
The U.S. has sought to dial back concern about the Chinese balloon, saying that it added only limited benefits to satellite surveillance and that sensitive U.S. military facilities took steps to limit electronic spying as it passed over. China has maintained that it was a weather balloon that went astray.
In a sign that both sides are eager to turn the page, Blinken is said to be weighing a meeting with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference beginning Friday.
Still, tensions between the world’s two largest economies remain high. On Thursday, in a largely symbolic gesture, Beijing imposed fines and sanctions against two U.S. defense companies, Lockheed Martin Corp. and a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies Corp., due to their participation in arms sales to Taiwan, China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement.
Charlie Moore, a retired lieutenant general who was a former vice director of operations at NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command, and who is now at Vanderbilt University, said the U.S. should make clear that there will be consequences if more balloons enter U.S. territory.
“The Chinese must understand there is a diplomatic and economic price to pay for the overt violation of international law,” he said. “We should not conduct the diplomatic meeting with Secretary Blinken until this is resolved.”
Late Thursday, the Financial Times reported that Michael Chase, the U.S.’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, will go to Taiwan in the coming days. That appeared to be a signal that while the U.S. wants to stabilize ties with China, it won’t back down from other actions, including its nurturing of relations with Taiwan, that have angered Beijing.
The White House said the spy balloon episode revealed a wide-ranging espionage program the Chinese government used to target 40 countries worldwide. U.S. officials have briefed other nations that it says were overflown by such spy balloons in the past.
The U.S. is now working to recover the payload of the Chinese craft as well as the other objects it downed. Significant amounts of equipment have been recovered from the Chinese airship in waters off of South Carolina, but weather conditions have made the ongoing work difficult — and have prevented personnel from collecting debris from the three other objects that fell in remote locations.
–With assistance from Katrina Manson.
Floating the prospect of a call to the Chinese President underscored the seriousness of the White House efforts to calm the relationship with Beijing.