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Comment by noir_lord | Hacker News Reader

> Following that previous logic, China is very careful about not kicking the honet's nest because it would be it's end

The US would win a conventional war but it would be bloody and expensive in both life and material.

Neither side wants that, China wants to get to a point where it's strong enough that fighting the US would be incredibly expensive and the US wants to maintain a position where it's strong enough to deter China from doing whatever China wants to do, it's a strange world when the US's largest trading partner is in a cold war style stand off.

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It's tough to say who will win. After all, the Soviet Union pretty much won WW2 with an enormous human sacrifice as much as the US likes to downplay it.

I agree two sides will do everything possible to avoid direct conflict just like the Cold War.

The US has an ocean between them and China. US power projection would be tested and probably ultimately fail due to unbelievable expense of such a war but China would not win unless you call not losing a win. Soviet Union could take their land army straight to Germany but China has no way to project power to US.

> US power projection would be tested and probably ultimately fail due to unbelievable expense

I think you're wrong here. The US has been investing in power projection for 80 some odd years now, and is leaps and bounds ahead of any other nation. Yes it would be expensive...but we've been paying a premium for quite a long time to have this capability. Additionally, the supply chain is drastically shortened because of the sheer number of US or allied bases in the area - Japan, South Korea, the Philippines (though that one has become a bit questionable).

It depends on what the condition is for "win", the US couldn't likely invade and hold China but end China as a military threat absolutely, it would be a war of attrition but the US could wipe out the Chinese military and most of their industrial capacity (a lot of it is on the coast after all).

The US has never entered into a conventional war with another power close to their own. It is a 100% uncertainty if the US would win, even with the US' more expensive wartoys that are still unproven.

Just a cursory glance at US' military history the past century reveals the US has only engaged against powers that were greatly diminished (European Theater, Russia, JP), or in and against countries in regions that were relatively far less equipped and primitive in weaponry (Asia, Africa, Middle East, etc).

How can 2 nuclear powers fight a conventional war?

Theoretically by not pushing the other one so hard that they'd go nuclear but it would be tap dancing on a cliff edge the whole way.

The 'traditional' way for nuclear powers to fight a 'war' is via Proxy wars (Vietnam, middle eastern wars etc).

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