I doubt it will come to fruition. Where do I start. 1. Sanctions are only effective if a lot of other countries also do it. Who would be willing to follow sui

I doubt it will come to fruition. Where do I start. 1. Sanctions are only effective if a lot of other countries also do it. Who would be willing to follow suit because of a cyber skirmish that doesn't involve them? Traditionally the Europeans would follow suit with this type of thing. But hell, Russia is taking land in their backyard and the Europeans can't even come to a consensus on that. Snow balls chance they form a unified opinion on China. Furthermore they are tired of following America in its quixotic foreign adventures. How about Australia? Nope. Their economy nowadays is shipping mineral wealth to China. Anything short of the PLAN maneuvering towards Sydney would make them think about sanctions. By the same reasoning, discount any country that appears darkly colored on this map: http://imgur.com/msbZwo6 http://imgur.com/msbZwo6 2. Is America's geopolitical enemy China or Russia? Because right now they are getting quite close with each-other. Russia's economy would be even more fucked without China buying its gas, and China needs resources like I need adderall (hint: a lot). If you try to isolate and contain both at once, you'll just end up with a regional power bloc that parallels or even surpasses US hegemony. 3. Right now the Chinese economic slowdown has caused ripples in the world economies. Even though the Chinese stock market is relatively contained, the mere fear that the Chinese engine is stalling has caused a small panic around the world. Are we really so confident in our post-2008 recovery to just yolo it and inform investors that we will be kicking China while its down? This is like pointing a gun at your foot hoping to blow that hang-nail straight off. 4. China isn't some two-bit country. It will look like America is trying to use diplomatic and military clout in lieu of actual competitive advantage to maintain global dominance. I'd like to imagine that Obama is smart enough not to actually do this (or only have a hopelessly watered down version). Here is my pet theory: Donald goddamn Trump. This upcoming election year the crotchety-old-man demographic has gone mainstream. Trump has bought China (and Mexico and a few other things) to the forefront. If status-quo candidate Clinton is to have a chance, the status-quo needs to look anti-China. Obama can help with that by throwing some hot air around and making some empty threats at China. Its ok, the Chinese understand that election year rhetoric means nothing. Maybe while Xi is dining at 1600 next week, Obama will tell him all of this explicitly. If you really wanted to f over the Chinese and start a new cold war, start by undermining their canal plans to circumvent the straight of Malaca, promote regime change / instability in Pakistan (see: maritime silk road) and a few other countries (the other silk road project), conclude the Iran deal for good measure, finance Japanese political groups that want to amend away the passive part of their constitution, Strengthen ties with that other billion-people country in the region (India), and use Turkey to keep on doing what their doing with the Uigers. Warning: about half of this may result in another 9/11 at some point.