Unless Washington’s provocations upset the dangerously unsteady balance it depends on, and lead to a third world war, the future of warfare between the U.S. and its geopolitical challengers will not primarily be based in the realm of international flare-ups like the “Chinese spy balloon” upset. It will be based in a series of economic struggles that end with the imperialists losing trade dominance over Eurasia, and therefore losing their neo-colonial extractive sources. The American war machine’s ruse of treating a benign Chinese aircraft as malicious, then shooting it down for dramatic effect, has had no impact on history other than provide another reason for China to be irritated at the USA. And unless Washington oversteps in a way which it knows would lead to a crisis too big for it to handle, China and its other adversaries will never respond to Washington’s antics by escalating towards open war. These kinds of stunts by the imperialists are nothing more than ways to narratively justify its militarism, sanctions, and war-related austerity, which the imperialists hope will reverse the transition towards multipolarity.