“Imagine a Chinese plane flying a surveillance mission off the Florida coast colliding with a Navy F-16 sent on an aggressive monitoring mission. The Navy fighter goes down and the pilot is lost; the Chinese plane is forced to land on US soil. The incident occurs at a moment when China is about to supply a package of sophisticated weapons to Cuba (possibly including the very same model spy plane now in US hands); is planning to deploy a missile shield that would neutralize the US nuclear arsenal; and has signaled that curbing US regional ambitions it to become the organizing principle of its military doctrine. Imagine further that the incident comes two years after Chinese bombs had destroyed (albeit inadvertently) a US embassy in Europe... It's unlikely Americans would feel in a particularly forgiving mood, either.”

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), April 03, 2001

Answers

Imagine a russian trawler sitting off the Washington Coast monitoring the arrival and departure of US submarines. Imagine a russian trawler sitting off the Florida coast monitoring missile launches. This has been going on for a long time. How many Russian trawlers have we sunk in the past 50 years. The only reason the chinese don't fly surveillance along our coast is because they do not have that capability.

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 06, 2001.