Sen. Tim Kaine says ‘ill-timed’ spy balloon was ‘incompetent’ move by China

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said China’s “ill-timed” spy balloon that traveled across the United States before being shot down last week was an “incompetent” move by Beijing. 

“It was an ill-conceived and ill-timed and incompetent move,” Kaine said during an interview on Fox News’s “Cavuto Live.”

After the balloon was discovered, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that he would postpone a scheduled visit to China because of the situation. 

“China really wanted to have this dialogue with Secretary Blinken, and so to have this happen right before that dialogue demonstrated some significant, I think, incompetence and maybe kind of a left hand-right hand problem,” Kaine said. 

He said incidents like these will get “a lot of attention” from the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees as Congress works on the annual defense funding bill in the spring. 

Kaine, who serves on both committees, said China is “certainly” a competitor but also an adversary in cases such as the surveillance balloon. He said that requires the U.S. to be creative in finding ways to work with China. 

“You need to keep a line of communication open between the two most powerful nations in the world,” he said. 

Kaine said he found it “disturbing” that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s Chinese counterpart refused to speak to him on the phone about the balloon after it was discovered. He said communication was a crucial way to avoid escalation between the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War. 

“So we have to figure out a way that as challenging as the relationship is that the communication is thorough and robust so we don’t accidentally have a miscalculation,” the Virginia senator added.