Thrown Under the MIRV Bus

The Obama administration announced with much fanfare our "pivot" to Asia (which in my mind is more like a pivot away from the Middle East). Apparently, our nuanced signal of stiff-arming Taiwan did nothing to convince China to give us more space in Asia.

This is pretty shameful:

The U.S. has agreed to ship back Pac 2 Patriot anti-aircraft missiles Taiwan sent to the United States for upgrades in 2008. These were to have been sent back in 2009 but were delayed for three years by, well, no one will admit exactly what the reason was. Might have had something to do with China pressuring the United States to not send weapons to Taiwan.

China kept deploying more ballistic missiles opposite Taiwan, and now has 1600 of them. How's that for nuance?