Who is 'you guys'? And there is no 'blockade'. We couldn't 'blockade' Japan in WWII with a much bigger Navy."
U.S. AND CHINA NEARLY CAME TO BLOWS IN '96
On Thursday, March 7, 1996, in an elegant dining room overlooking the Potomac River, Defense Secretary William J. Perry delivered a threat -- about as blunt as they come in contemporary diplomacy -- to go to war. Hours before, U.S. Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance craft and the cruiser USS Bunker Hill had monitored three Chinese M-9 ballistic missiles as they were rapid-fired from China's Huanan mountains toward Taiwan. They splashed down in the shipping lanes adjacent to Taiwan's two principal seaports: first Kaohsiung in the south, then Chilung in the north, then south again to Kaohsiung.
The exercise designated by the Chinese military as "Strait 961" was by many measures the most provocative ever staged in the Taiwan Strait, but some U.S. analysts saw special significance in China's use of the nuclear-capable M-9 missile. The M-9 batteries belonged to China's nuclear rocket force -- the Second Artillery -- and Chinese press accounts called attention to that fact.
What no one disclosed at the time was that one of the missiles passed almost directly over Taiwan's capital, Taipei, before landing 19 miles off the coast.
"I said you'll get a military reaction from the United States" if China attacks Taiwan, Freeman recalled, "and they said, No, you won't. We've watched you in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia, and you don't have the will.' " Then, according to Freeman, a senior officer added: "In the 1950s, you three times threatened nuclear strikes on China, and you could do that because we couldn't hit back. Now we can. So you are not going to threaten us again because, in the end, you care a lot more about Los Angeles than Taipei."
Though it is different this time, we did not have the other distractions going on back then. Now it is much more complicated. This next couple months could be very difficult.
But they didn't, This isn't Krinton anymore. Chinks are masters of the provocation, but if they COULD project power, they would have vs Taiwan. Now they are the descending Dragon. To play they will need those 'obsolete' weapons. In an engagement with the USN, we would lose fewer ships than we have because of 0's policies.
Yeah, but actually, we don't care that much about filthy LA.