Now the People’s Republic of China is overtly rubbing President Barack Obama’s timidity in his face, and in the face of the United States.  The USNS Bowditch had been conducting ocean floor surveys in the South China Sea and was recovering the drones it used in conjunction with those surveys when a PRC vessel that had been stalking shadowing the Bowditch snatched one of the drones and made off with it.

This is, at best, an act of rank piracy and a theft of technology the PRC does not have.

The question then becomes: what is President Barack Obama (D) going to do about it—besides wagging his finger and trying to talk tough, I mean.  Here’s Peter Cook, Obama’s Pentagon spokesman:

We call upon China to return our [unmanned underwater vehicle] immediately, and to comply with all of its obligations under international law[.]

Please.  We beg you to leave us alone.

State has lodged a formal protest with the PRC.  That’ll show them.

Apparently Obama is, once again, satisfying himself with trying to sound tough without actually doing anything.  He lacks the self-awareness even to be embarrassed by this face slap.

And now that the PRC has collected the drone’s intel value while rubbing Obama’s impotence in his face, they say they’ll return the drone.  Sometime.