Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
If it was me and the Chinese had been exercising with the Mexican Navy for the last several decades and it never interfered with my free use of the sea for trade, I wouldn't really care. There they go on this year's exercise.
I wouldn't care either, but you can bet there'd be a fair bit of hysteria in the background. The point is that before we assume that people think we're impotent and we need to show them otherwise, we might want to consider that a lot of people may already see us as an altogether too potent threat, one that they have to gear up to counter or confront. If we're looking at managing perceptions, we need to look realistically at what they are.