Atlantis
10-26-2021, 02:35 AM
There are two beliefs common in society about China. The first is that war with China isn't an inevitability - people acknowledge it's likely, but they don't think it's necessarily inevitable. The second is that such a war would likely be a nuclear one in which millions of people died.
I disagree - I believe that a US-China war will be a conventional naval war similar to the Pacific War fought by the US and Japan, and that it's basically inevitable and will only lead to a few hundred thousand casualties, not millions or be the end of the world.
The geopolitical situation from China's perspective - unlike the Eastern Pacific in which there are few islands, the western Pacific is filled with islands. These islands can serve as bases from which power can be projected to the Asian mainland, including most of China. China's sense of vulnerability and desire for greater security are the driving force behind its construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea. But China doesn't just want to control the South China Sea - it wants to control every island in the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii.
And China will start that war because it's unlikely for it to escalate to an all-out strategic nuclear war in which millions or tens of millions die. If China loses the war, China will probably end up losing almost all of its naval fighting power. But even if China loses its navy in their worst case scenario, they'll still have invested into their Belt and Road project and thus have access to trade with partners all across Eurasia, which will have a growing majority of the world's population and thus economic demand.
Why the war won't escalate to nuclear war. Both sides instinctively know that the cost of fully subduing and destroying the other side is prohibitive. If the US wins a naval war and retains command of the Pacific Ocean in either a decisive and quick war or a long and drawn out one, why would the US continue into a mainland invasion of China? These are two completely different wars we are talking about, and the US would almost certainly just stop there. Even if tactical nukes are used, a strategic nuclear exchange remains unlikely. Each step on the escalation ladder would lead to an exponential rise in casualties and destruction, something neither side wishes to do.
So China's worst case scenario is that it loses the artificial island bases in the South China Sea, control of its sea lanes. But it would still have enormous influence on the Eurasian mainland, which is already great and rapidly growing with no sign of slowing down soon.
China's best case scenario is that it wins the conventional naval/air war and gains control of most or all of the Pacific islands in the Western half of the Pacific Ocean, which is what Japan was trying to achieve in the Pacific War, and manages to defend them. China's aims in the future war can be no different from those of Japan in the past war because the geography hasn't changed. In this scenario, China would rise to the status of the sole superpower and displace America from that position.
China stands to lose very little and has the chance of gaining an enormous amount by starting a war in the Pacific. It could easily start a war on some pretext like Taiwan. In any situation in which the risk-reward ratio is so skewed in favor of the reward, it is reasonable to conclude that a rational power maximizing agent, which is probably a fair description of the Chinese government, will act in its own interest. It is also reasonable to conclude that the US will seek to maintain the status quo and resist the loss of its global influence and power by all reasonable means (but which I believe won't escalate to strategic nuclear exchanges). Therefore, it follows that a future US-China conventional war is more or less inevitable.
That being said, I'm not a political expert or anything. I'm only a random guy on the Internet with an opinion..
I disagree - I believe that a US-China war will be a conventional naval war similar to the Pacific War fought by the US and Japan, and that it's basically inevitable and will only lead to a few hundred thousand casualties, not millions or be the end of the world.
The geopolitical situation from China's perspective - unlike the Eastern Pacific in which there are few islands, the western Pacific is filled with islands. These islands can serve as bases from which power can be projected to the Asian mainland, including most of China. China's sense of vulnerability and desire for greater security are the driving force behind its construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea. But China doesn't just want to control the South China Sea - it wants to control every island in the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii.
And China will start that war because it's unlikely for it to escalate to an all-out strategic nuclear war in which millions or tens of millions die. If China loses the war, China will probably end up losing almost all of its naval fighting power. But even if China loses its navy in their worst case scenario, they'll still have invested into their Belt and Road project and thus have access to trade with partners all across Eurasia, which will have a growing majority of the world's population and thus economic demand.
Why the war won't escalate to nuclear war. Both sides instinctively know that the cost of fully subduing and destroying the other side is prohibitive. If the US wins a naval war and retains command of the Pacific Ocean in either a decisive and quick war or a long and drawn out one, why would the US continue into a mainland invasion of China? These are two completely different wars we are talking about, and the US would almost certainly just stop there. Even if tactical nukes are used, a strategic nuclear exchange remains unlikely. Each step on the escalation ladder would lead to an exponential rise in casualties and destruction, something neither side wishes to do.
So China's worst case scenario is that it loses the artificial island bases in the South China Sea, control of its sea lanes. But it would still have enormous influence on the Eurasian mainland, which is already great and rapidly growing with no sign of slowing down soon.
China's best case scenario is that it wins the conventional naval/air war and gains control of most or all of the Pacific islands in the Western half of the Pacific Ocean, which is what Japan was trying to achieve in the Pacific War, and manages to defend them. China's aims in the future war can be no different from those of Japan in the past war because the geography hasn't changed. In this scenario, China would rise to the status of the sole superpower and displace America from that position.
China stands to lose very little and has the chance of gaining an enormous amount by starting a war in the Pacific. It could easily start a war on some pretext like Taiwan. In any situation in which the risk-reward ratio is so skewed in favor of the reward, it is reasonable to conclude that a rational power maximizing agent, which is probably a fair description of the Chinese government, will act in its own interest. It is also reasonable to conclude that the US will seek to maintain the status quo and resist the loss of its global influence and power by all reasonable means (but which I believe won't escalate to strategic nuclear exchanges). Therefore, it follows that a future US-China conventional war is more or less inevitable.
That being said, I'm not a political expert or anything. I'm only a random guy on the Internet with an opinion..