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China stands absolutely no chance in a direct war with US and her allies. Not only do we absolutely decimate them in nuclear and naval capabilities, our combin

China stands absolutely no chance in a direct war with US and her allies. Not only do we absolutely decimate them in nuclear and naval capabilities, our combined allied forces would decimate them technologically, on the ground, and through strategic embargoing, attrition, psychological warfare, etc. We and our allies literally surround them. Not only that, look into geopolitics, Trump getting a call from Taiwan pisses China off more than giving them weapons. Why? Acknowledging and reaffirming our commitment to protect them, angers them more than physical capability of defense for Taiwan. China enslaves a portion of its citizens, jails activists, kidnaps Taiwanese, support DPRK, among other things. Trump is remapping Asian relations, because China isn't strong, nor are they suicidal. Rewriting our trade relations will help us, and if they continue being friends with us, good for them as well. A restructuring is likely, and a war will only happen if our Asian allies or China forces our hand. If so, we win, based on any strategic viewpoint of might.

rdl 10y ago
I agree we would clearly win, but it would still be a worse outcome by far, even in winning, than the status quo, or virtually any othe non-war situation (even a trade war or Cold War).
rtpg 10y ago
This sort of statement is useless without context. What would be the objective of such a war? Regime change? Iraq and Afghanistan are both much smaller, yet the US wasn't too good with that. Sure, the US could probably protect itself from any nation's military. But there's no universe where a successful incursion into China leads to anything apart from massive pain for everyone involved
- 67726e 10y ago
  If we could deal with Japan and Germany, why not China? What makes China more comparable to Iraq and Afghanistan? Edit: Since I'm getting downvoted there's obviously some issue with the question which I'd love to hear. What makes the situation more comparable to our recent quagmires and not more "traditional" and, in my mind comparable, situations with Germany and Japan?
  - 794CD01 10y ago
    Nuclear weapons and ICBMs to deliver them are the most obvious difference. The world in general is just so different than it was 70 years ago that it doesn't make sense to take the stance of "assume things are the same unless given an explicit reason not to" anymore.
    - 67726e 10y ago
      My point is that a war with China would resemble a more traditional war as opposed to an insurgent conflict as in Iraq or Afghanistan. Why would we assume fighting a proper nation state would resemble fighting random lots of terrorists with varying agendas?
      - 794CD01 10y ago
        You're assuming that what made the Iraq/Afghanistan invasions different from previous wars was the opponent rather than the advance of technology.
        67726e 10y ago
        > You're assuming that what made the Iraq/Afghanistan invasions different from previous wars was the opponent Is that not the case? What does technology have to do with these cases?
        794CD01 10y ago
        I would say the biggest effect is that modern media makes America much more sensitive to casualties, in contrast to the past where broadcast-style media like TV and newspapers were essentially hijacked for uncontested government propaganda. I'm sure if an expert thought about it for a while he/she would come up with more stuff around homemade explosives/IEDs, small arms, and the like, but I think media is the main one.
        67726e 10y ago
bryanlarsen 10y ago
In any all-out war between two nuclear nations there will be no winner, just two losers.
- protomyth 10y ago
  Well, we better get pretty good at shooting down missiles because North Korea has a bit of the crazy and nuclear weapons. I get the feeling that someone has looked at the Aegis combined with XR standard missiles. I'm not worried about China. I'm worried about the last days of a dictator.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Shooting down one missile is a lot easier than shooting down a hundred. The US has had the ability to defend against an attack from North Korea since the W Bush administration. That capability would barely dent a Chinese attack.
    - protomyth 10y ago
      I wasn't talking about China, just the "any" nuclear power is hopefully becomes a false statement given NK's instability. Do you have a source on the "The US has had the ability to defend against an attack from North Korea since the W Bush administration." for ballistic missiles?
      - mikeash 10y ago
        This is the system in question: https://www.mda.mil/system/gmd.html https://www.mda.mil/system/gmd.html The interceptors are expensive, so there aren't very many. That's why it can defend against a country like North Korea but not China.
        protomyth 10y ago
        Ok, but why do you keep mentioning China, I said I wasn't worried about China. I'm worried about the crazy folks (e.g. NK) with limited launch capability. China is pretty stable.
bbctol 10y ago
Yes; I'm worried about those in power on the American side. The fact that China would lose a war against the United States doesn't mean it would be a good thing for the US; the best we could do is lose less.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
WayneBro 10y ago
You don't know that. You think you know something based on what you can see, but that is all.
raaaaraaaa 10y ago
Dude, this is not another DEFCON game. All your confidence is based on fact that nobody will touch north American area. Good luck with this 'strategy'.
- tokenizer 10y ago
  All of my "confidence" is based on stockpiles of nuclear arnaments, nuclear submarine capabilities, missile shields, nuclear destination sites for both parties, potential first strike responses, allied coalitions, global trade, and internal strife. China loses. Plain and simple. So, given that China obviously knows what I know, a trade restructuring is the best way for both sides to Win. Lopsided deals from the 70s, when Kissinger gave our millionaires cheap labour from China - Doesn't work anymore.
dagss 10y ago
How on earth do you define "win"? How exactly can you "decimate" someone in nuclear capability? The earth can only be destroyed (for purposes of supporting human life) once. US being able to destroy it five times over and China once doesn't really help in real life. It is not like you can trade one US nuke 1:1 to stop one China nuke.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  >How exactly can you "decimate" someone in nuclear capability? That's easy: you destroy 1/10 of their forces. If you mean anything else by using the term "decimate", you're using it wrong.
  - danharaj 10y ago
    This is pedantic, pointless and wrong.
    - Arizhel 10y ago
      Pedantic, perhaps. Wrong? Definitely not. Look it up. "Decimation" was a term invented by the Romans, and was a method of punishing Army units who failed in battle. All the men would line up, and every 10th man would be executed. That's why it's called "decimation": "deci" is Latin for 10. Modern uses of the word are simply wrong and nonsensical if you understand that "deci" means 10, which should be obvious to any competent English speaker who knows of the word "decimal" and understands our numbering system.
      - danharaj 10y ago
        Linguistic prescriptivism is pedantic and wrong.
      - bbctol 10y ago
        Did you look it up before saying "look it up"?
adekok 10y ago
And what would the US do without daily imports of thousands of cargo containers of goods? How would the US engage in sustained war when a significant percentage of goods used to propagate the war come from China? How would the US "technological superiority" deal with supply lines thousands of miles long (e.g. invasion). How would the US "technological superiority" deal with being outnumbered 2 to 1? It's difficult to just wave away these problems.
- jdmichal 10y ago
  If the US' continuing presence in the Middle East and other areas demonstrates anything, it's that maintaining supply lines is not an issue for US military logistics. And technological superiority is exactly how you fight and win a war with a 1:2 manpower disadvantage... So I'm not quite sure what you're trying to get at there.
bilbo0s 10y ago
A direct war between the US and China would be over in a matter of hours. And the only "winners" would be any nations in the southern hemisphere who had the good sense to sit the war out. My money would be on Indonesia and Brazil in the short term. Longer term, South Africa would be the big winner. That'd be my guess.
ocschwar 10y ago
What allies? The Philippines already crossed over to China;s side. Vietnam, which just 2 years ago invited the US Navy to use the ports at Da Nang, has been miffed by the loss of TPP. Obama worked hard to build a coalition confronting China to prevent the war from ever happening. Trump's incompetence is destroying it. And free trade has kept China peaceful by establishing that any resource the Chinese want, from any other country, they can compete for by bidding for it, rather than having to fight for it. Now Trump is threatening that. This loudmouth moron is goading China into war and making it more likely they will win.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  The TPP was a significant issue in the election, and helped get Trump elected. It even divided the Democratic party, and Hillary finally switched sides and was against it. The TPP had way too much input from Obama's corporate masters, particularly in the entertainment industry. It was a good idea at first, I think, but it was ruined by the details. It wasn't a good deal for regular Americans, only the corporations. So it's not just Trump's incompetence at work here, it's Obama's incompetence too. He could have made a much more limited TPP that didn't give so much power to Hollywood and the copyright cartels.
  - ocschwar 10y ago
    All true. But it takes a president with an attention span longer than 90 seconds to fix these issues. If instead we have a guy who just nixes TPP, then we have to take note that we do not have allies in the west Pacific in a war with China.
    - jdmichal 10y ago
      If a from-scratch refactor is what the TPP needs, then nixing it is the first step...
      - ocschwar 10y ago
        That's assuming the other parties to the negotiation will be cool with it. We have a president who doesn't seem to understand we don't get to dictate terms to other countries.
algebraicgeo 10y ago
I apologize for my ignorance. How do people know of this stuff? Do the branches of military publish peer reviewed papers?
jcranmer 10y ago
A war between the US and China is most likely to result in a stalemate. China may not have the capabilities to threaten continental US possessions to any degree, but it does have the ability to deny amphibious invasion. The coast of China would be an active war zone, with neither side able to move with impunity. Beyond that, it's hard to say what would happen without knowing who would be involved in the way, which depends a lot on how the war was started. The main land routes into China are either via Russia (unlikely to permit staging of US troops), Kazakhstan (ditto), Kyrgyzstan via Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (aka the Silk Road, and dubious due to enough tensions between those countries), Burma (again dubious permission), Vietnam (which might prefer to try to remain neutral), and North Korea (which would only happen in the context of a North-South Korea war). The passes over the Himalayas from Pakistan, India, and Nepal are insufficient quality to maintain an armed front. Recall the difficulties of supplying Chinese forces in WWII.
rybosome 10y ago
I find it baffling that you can speak about open conflict between two nuclear superpowers so confidently. Nuclear exchange would mean, best case, collapse of civilization with a possible extreme worst case of human extinction. Why in God's name would you even tamper with the possibility? Or do you think that nukes would never be used, no matter how desperate either side got?

rdl 10y ago

I agree we would clearly win, but it would still be a worse outcome by far, even in winning, than the status quo, or virtually any othe non-war situation (even a trade war or Cold War).

rtpg 10y ago

This sort of statement is useless without context. What would be the objective of such a war? Regime change? Iraq and Afghanistan are both much smaller, yet the US wasn't too good with that. Sure, the US could probably protect itself from any nation's military. But there's no universe where a successful incursion into China leads to anything apart from massive pain for everyone involved

67726e 10y ago
If we could deal with Japan and Germany, why not China? What makes China more comparable to Iraq and Afghanistan? Edit: Since I'm getting downvoted there's obviously some issue with the question which I'd love to hear. What makes the situation more comparable to our recent quagmires and not more "traditional" and, in my mind comparable, situations with Germany and Japan?
- 794CD01 10y ago
  Nuclear weapons and ICBMs to deliver them are the most obvious difference. The world in general is just so different than it was 70 years ago that it doesn't make sense to take the stance of "assume things are the same unless given an explicit reason not to" anymore.
  - 67726e 10y ago
    My point is that a war with China would resemble a more traditional war as opposed to an insurgent conflict as in Iraq or Afghanistan. Why would we assume fighting a proper nation state would resemble fighting random lots of terrorists with varying agendas?
    - 794CD01 10y ago
      You're assuming that what made the Iraq/Afghanistan invasions different from previous wars was the opponent rather than the advance of technology.
      - 67726e 10y ago
        > You're assuming that what made the Iraq/Afghanistan invasions different from previous wars was the opponent Is that not the case? What does technology have to do with these cases?
        794CD01 10y ago
        I would say the biggest effect is that modern media makes America much more sensitive to casualties, in contrast to the past where broadcast-style media like TV and newspapers were essentially hijacked for uncontested government propaganda. I'm sure if an expert thought about it for a while he/she would come up with more stuff around homemade explosives/IEDs, small arms, and the like, but I think media is the main one.
        67726e 10y ago

bryanlarsen 10y ago

In any all-out war between two nuclear nations there will be no winner, just two losers.

protomyth 10y ago
Well, we better get pretty good at shooting down missiles because North Korea has a bit of the crazy and nuclear weapons. I get the feeling that someone has looked at the Aegis combined with XR standard missiles. I'm not worried about China. I'm worried about the last days of a dictator.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Shooting down one missile is a lot easier than shooting down a hundred. The US has had the ability to defend against an attack from North Korea since the W Bush administration. That capability would barely dent a Chinese attack.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    I wasn't talking about China, just the "any" nuclear power is hopefully becomes a false statement given NK's instability. Do you have a source on the "The US has had the ability to defend against an attack from North Korea since the W Bush administration." for ballistic missiles?
    - mikeash 10y ago
      This is the system in question: https://www.mda.mil/system/gmd.html https://www.mda.mil/system/gmd.html The interceptors are expensive, so there aren't very many. That's why it can defend against a country like North Korea but not China.
      - protomyth 10y ago
        Ok, but why do you keep mentioning China, I said I wasn't worried about China. I'm worried about the crazy folks (e.g. NK) with limited launch capability. China is pretty stable.

bbctol 10y ago

Yes; I'm worried about those in power on the American side. The fact that China would lose a war against the United States doesn't mean it would be a good thing for the US; the best we could do is lose less.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

WayneBro 10y ago

You don't know that. You think you know something based on what you can see, but that is all.

raaaaraaaa 10y ago

Dude, this is not another DEFCON game. All your confidence is based on fact that nobody will touch north American area. Good luck with this 'strategy'.

tokenizer 10y ago
All of my "confidence" is based on stockpiles of nuclear arnaments, nuclear submarine capabilities, missile shields, nuclear destination sites for both parties, potential first strike responses, allied coalitions, global trade, and internal strife. China loses. Plain and simple. So, given that China obviously knows what I know, a trade restructuring is the best way for both sides to Win. Lopsided deals from the 70s, when Kissinger gave our millionaires cheap labour from China - Doesn't work anymore.

dagss 10y ago

How on earth do you define "win"? How exactly can you "decimate" someone in nuclear capability? The earth can only be destroyed (for purposes of supporting human life) once. US being able to destroy it five times over and China once doesn't really help in real life. It is not like you can trade one US nuke 1:1 to stop one China nuke.

Arizhel 10y ago
>How exactly can you "decimate" someone in nuclear capability? That's easy: you destroy 1/10 of their forces. If you mean anything else by using the term "decimate", you're using it wrong.
- danharaj 10y ago
  This is pedantic, pointless and wrong.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    Pedantic, perhaps. Wrong? Definitely not. Look it up. "Decimation" was a term invented by the Romans, and was a method of punishing Army units who failed in battle. All the men would line up, and every 10th man would be executed. That's why it's called "decimation": "deci" is Latin for 10. Modern uses of the word are simply wrong and nonsensical if you understand that "deci" means 10, which should be obvious to any competent English speaker who knows of the word "decimal" and understands our numbering system.
    - danharaj 10y ago
      Linguistic prescriptivism is pedantic and wrong.
    - bbctol 10y ago
      Did you look it up before saying "look it up"?

adekok 10y ago

And what would the US do without daily imports of thousands of cargo containers of goods? How would the US engage in sustained war when a significant percentage of goods used to propagate the war come from China? How would the US "technological superiority" deal with supply lines thousands of miles long (e.g. invasion). How would the US "technological superiority" deal with being outnumbered 2 to 1? It's difficult to just wave away these problems.

jdmichal 10y ago
If the US' continuing presence in the Middle East and other areas demonstrates anything, it's that maintaining supply lines is not an issue for US military logistics. And technological superiority is exactly how you fight and win a war with a 1:2 manpower disadvantage... So I'm not quite sure what you're trying to get at there.

bilbo0s 10y ago

A direct war between the US and China would be over in a matter of hours. And the only "winners" would be any nations in the southern hemisphere who had the good sense to sit the war out. My money would be on Indonesia and Brazil in the short term. Longer term, South Africa would be the big winner. That'd be my guess.

ocschwar 10y ago

What allies? The Philippines already crossed over to China;s side. Vietnam, which just 2 years ago invited the US Navy to use the ports at Da Nang, has been miffed by the loss of TPP. Obama worked hard to build a coalition confronting China to prevent the war from ever happening. Trump's incompetence is destroying it. And free trade has kept China peaceful by establishing that any resource the Chinese want, from any other country, they can compete for by bidding for it, rather than having to fight for it. Now Trump is threatening that. This loudmouth moron is goading China into war and making it more likely they will win.

Arizhel 10y ago
The TPP was a significant issue in the election, and helped get Trump elected. It even divided the Democratic party, and Hillary finally switched sides and was against it. The TPP had way too much input from Obama's corporate masters, particularly in the entertainment industry. It was a good idea at first, I think, but it was ruined by the details. It wasn't a good deal for regular Americans, only the corporations. So it's not just Trump's incompetence at work here, it's Obama's incompetence too. He could have made a much more limited TPP that didn't give so much power to Hollywood and the copyright cartels.
- ocschwar 10y ago
  All true. But it takes a president with an attention span longer than 90 seconds to fix these issues. If instead we have a guy who just nixes TPP, then we have to take note that we do not have allies in the west Pacific in a war with China.
  - jdmichal 10y ago
    If a from-scratch refactor is what the TPP needs, then nixing it is the first step...
    - ocschwar 10y ago
      That's assuming the other parties to the negotiation will be cool with it. We have a president who doesn't seem to understand we don't get to dictate terms to other countries.

algebraicgeo 10y ago

I apologize for my ignorance. How do people know of this stuff? Do the branches of military publish peer reviewed papers?

jcranmer 10y ago

A war between the US and China is most likely to result in a stalemate. China may not have the capabilities to threaten continental US possessions to any degree, but it does have the ability to deny amphibious invasion. The coast of China would be an active war zone, with neither side able to move with impunity. Beyond that, it's hard to say what would happen without knowing who would be involved in the way, which depends a lot on how the war was started. The main land routes into China are either via Russia (unlikely to permit staging of US troops), Kazakhstan (ditto), Kyrgyzstan via Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (aka the Silk Road, and dubious due to enough tensions between those countries), Burma (again dubious permission), Vietnam (which might prefer to try to remain neutral), and North Korea (which would only happen in the context of a North-South Korea war). The passes over the Himalayas from Pakistan, India, and Nepal are insufficient quality to maintain an armed front. Recall the difficulties of supplying Chinese forces in WWII.

rybosome 10y ago

I find it baffling that you can speak about open conflict between two nuclear superpowers so confidently. Nuclear exchange would mean, best case, collapse of civilization with a possible extreme worst case of human extinction. Why in God's name would you even tamper with the possibility? Or do you think that nukes would never be used, no matter how desperate either side got?