Running ships through the Taiwan Strait seems to be a needlessly provocative and pointless dick-swinging exercise. Not that I don't fear and loathe those Chi-Coms, but they make all our shit, and they don't run warships near our borders(?).
The tit-for-tat, I figured as much. Also, ugh Heritage Foundation.
Our ships are incapable of making implicit threats by their presence, and can only participate in innocent freedom of navigation exercises, and vice versa.
You're changing the argument. I'm just pointing out China does the same thing, even worse, threatening a US President. As far as I'm aware the US Navy hasn't threatened the Chinese leadership. You said they didn't do anything to deserve it, I'm saying yes they did. They brought this on themselves.
Looking at it from their point of view, I bet they view their ocean ports as (at least in the short run?) the only reasonable way to export all that shit.
(US and Soviet vessels used to actually make contact during the cold war; afaik the USN calls it "shouldering")
