Freeing the Hostages

We sent Nate to bed last night essentially without dinner.
If that doesn't shock you, you haven't been paying attention.  The earnest care and angst with which we coax every possible calorie into our son is exhausting.  Moreover, I think he understands on some level that we'll do just about anything to get him to eat - bribery, silly dances, games, reverse psychology.  Now, he's in the heart of the twos, looking for a way to assert himself and be independent, and the struggles about food have been escalating.  We coax, he refuses, then sweetly acquiesces, then refuses, then agrees to some new point of negotiation.
Last night he was overtired, Dave was sick, I was recovering from the fever-virus-from-hades, and the second time he pushed his nearly untouched dinner plate away and said he didn't want it, I did not push it back.  I took it into the kitchen and took him out of his seat and declared dinner over.
It's fair to say he never did really calm down again.  He cried and wailed about wanting his food, wanting to be held, wanting to eat dinner.  Most of it was incoherent but we did manage to determine that if the price of eating was sitting in his chair like a big boy, he was not interested.
We bathed and pajama-ed a weeping boy and put him to bed almost an hour early.  He was out like a light and was more pleasant though still "two" this morning.

Dave and I have agreed to let him go without eating if necessary.  He's on the growth chart, respectably chubby, and except for the "ice cream incident" at the fair, he hasn't thrown up in months.  It seems that at this point not eating is more likely to be a behavioral symptom than a medical one.
Sometimes toddlers eat and sometimes they don't.  They all seem to get by without their own personal short order cook. Nate is loosing his.