>I’m not sure any of your points counter any of what I said. The carriers near China are near China because Taiwan is near China, a carrier or even a carrier gr

>I’m not sure any of your points counter any of what I said. The carriers near China are near China because Taiwan is near China, a carrier or even a carrier group isn’t an offensive posture against a nation, it’s too small a force. It’s provocative because there’s a provocative situation between Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines, et al, and China all of whom are U.S. allies. However I don’t see any evidence the U.S. is preparing to attack China. What exactly are you saying then? Taiwan is not an official ally of the US. It's an unofficial relationship. Probably going to be made official soon because it's advantageous to the US. US is not preparing to attack China. The US just wants to keep Taiwan and TSMC out of China to slow down it's economic progress. Additionally the US wants to maintain military power in the pacific and Taiwan is a key strategic point here. China on the other hand sees Taiwan as a rogue state seceding from the Union. Similar to what the southern states tried to do during the US civil war. >On the rest re: Soviet and U.S. deployments, I’m not taking a side. I’m taking issue with you repeatedly saying “a missile” in the threads, when it was much more than that. Absolutely the Cold War was a two sided war. There were no clean hands. But in the Cuban missile crisis it was much different than the situation in and around Taiwan. No i disagree. The US reaction to it was obviously uncharacteristic. Other countries have to accept neighboring threats calmly when they have missiles at their door step but for the US it's unacceptable by their reaction to the missile crisis. I bring it up because it's hypocritical. Of course the US is self aware that what they're doing to other countries is a known physical threat. We know this by their own reaction to weapons on their doorstep during the cuban missile crisis.