I did NOT say that the US was attempting to provoke the Soviet Union into nuclear war. What I said was "we would have used that for boons". There was nothing defensive about our probing; we were examining Soviet defensive positioning and strategy which isn't at all useful when dealing with Soviet incursion.

Be that as it may, take a step back - I'm arguing that the US has always acted provocatively and you're arguing that a P-3 hitting a Chinese fighter is different from a Chinese fighter hitting a P-3. Look - an American ELINT/EW craft was 70 miles offshore of sovereign Chinese territory. That's provocative. The Chinese responded by buzzing the P-3. That's provocative. The P-3 didn't back down - that's provocative. And then the Chinese crashed into it, they had to land, and the Chinese took it apart. That's provocative. It's like last week when Turkey blockaded the Italians from approaching Cyprus for oil exploration, despite the fact that Turkey only lays claim to half of Cyprus - nobody's negotiating there, they're provoking. And US foreign policy has been provocative since the end of WWII.

Clinton had strikes in Afghanistan. He had covert ops. So did Bush I, so did Reagan. The only reason bin Laden was there is we invited him; our covert adventures in South Asia are legendary. GWB went to war because the Taliban were harboring bin Laden, who ended up in Pakistan. Obama didn't go to war with Pakistan, he sent in special ops. Bush's actions were disproportionate on an even grander scale than Reagan's invasion of Granada. If the goal is to get bin Laden, the method doesn't start with saturation bombing.

I'm not interested in getting into the goodness/badness argument of American foreign policy. The fact of the matter is, the US throws its weight around and has since the Monroe Doctrine. Post WWII, we've flown around with a chip on our shoulder. What kind of shitshow would it be if a Chinese EW aircraft cruised 70 miles off the coast of Miramar? Nobody else does that but us; even the Soviets pretended their boats were winkwink nudgenudge fishing trawlers.