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Originally Posted by roachboy
to my mind, there's no way around factoring taiwan into this picture.
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If the US stopped voicing support for Taiwan, what would that say about how we treat those who share similar ideals to ours? I mean we already have a black eye for abandoning the Vietnamese, the Koreans, the Iraqis, the Iranians, and the Kurds...
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i don't understand why you seem to want to factor it out.
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Because whether or not we support taiwan has no bearing over right-of-passage discussions when talking about large expanses of oceans. Hey, I bet we really pissed off North Korea when we said they were in the axis of evil, and I bet we really pissed off most of the arabic countries when we invaded Iraq. Does that mean they get to wander the oceans searching for US-flagged ships to harass?
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if i understand your position correctly, sharkran, this is an instance of legitimate dickwaving by the united states that is underpinned by some kind of Problem you have with china. on the former, see above---on the latter, i'm pretty agnostic on the question.
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Assuming the facts of this story are fairly accurate so far, I think it's China that did most of the dickwaving. Intelligence ships from all seafaring nations operate all over the world. It's routine and standard. Our ship is quietly humming along doing its thing in a part of the ocean where apparently even China admits it has the right to be (since china is claming it's an economic-restriction area and therefore rights-of-passage are still considered to be in effect) and it's being harangued by a bunch of Chinese boats.
I don't have a particular problem with China, but I do have a problem any time some nation decides to act like the schoolyard bully. If they considered it to be territorial waters, then they should have had the balls to say that up front, and then be willing to back it up with warships if necessary. Instead they claim no such thing, yet send five ships out to annoy ours, and create a dangerous situation in the process. They do not have the right to bar travel through that area. If they try and steal that right, then someone should point out that other nations that need to be in that area will not like it. Hence my response of parking a few navy vessels in the area. Wanna play your ramming game with an unarmed ship? Fine. Here's an armed ship. Let's see if you're still as brave in the thwarting of international law.
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so my position is more that the dickwaving seems pointless in itself and such legitimacy as it has derives from the politics surrounding taiwan.
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Based on this and the discussion in the nuclear submarine thread, I'm starting to think that you have a particular problem with armed boats. Be that as it may, a ship armed only with firehoses can hardly be classified as dick waving.