The US government claims a 200-mile limit on its coastal waters, but cedes other countries much less. So the US says it can sail a “surveillance” ship, the hilariously named Impeccable, 75 miles off a sensitive area of the Chinese coast. When the Chinese object, they are awful. Imagine if the Chinese tried to sail a spy ship 75 miles off San Diego. Kaboom! But here’s my question: given that the US is begging China to buy more of the government’s uncommercial paper, is it really smart to be antagonizing them?

UPDATE from Chris Vanlandingham:

This morning my wife and I heard about the story on the news. The reporter called the Impeccable a “mapping ship.” To which my wife said, “Yeah right, we are just now mapping off the Chinese coastline.” How stupid do they think we are? And then the video showed what looked like Chinese fishing boats throwing wood in front of the Impeccable’s path. I’m sure we will now start a new cold war in the face of such a powerful Chinese Navy, and their high tech weaponry of wooden planks will be rightfully dubbed WMDs.

UPDATE from Dennis Kilcoyne

Lew, it’s been reported that the U.S.S. Impeccable’s purpose in those waters off China was to use its sonar to survey the ocean floor. There can be only one purpose for this: to make hyper-accurate maps to enable our attack submarines to safely navigate there. We shouldn’t be surprised that the Chinese consider this to be aggressive. We would have the same reaction if they were taking similar actions off of San Diego, Norfolk or Houston. Mapping the ocean floor so close to China has nothing whatsoever to do with “defense.”