The question I always ask when people suggest warfare, especially an invasion: will you personally fight in it?
In case of any real conflict US will get dragged in, you will all be drafted, want you or not.
Becoming a soldier after being a freewheeling young man with 6 digit income, and effectively loosing everything you put into your career, business, education, relationship with your woman is not a pleasant thing.
But think, sooner or later US will be dragged into a real conflict. Everything is going towards that, and 2020, and multiple weak presidencies have only accelerated the timeline for Beijing, and Moscow.
China's strategy is to keep US in Iraq, and Afghanistan indefinitely, and have US dragged into fighting equally pointless, exhausting conflicts, whether they will be military, trade, or diplomatic.
They want to move that big direct conflict as much into future as possible, but that day will eventually, and inevitably come.
The question will be on whose terms will it happen.
What do you want? Loose everything and win, or loose everything and loose?
A conflict doesn't have to be a global war to qualify as "real conflict" by any sensible definition. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were a real conflict, yet there were no drafts.
Instead of absolute dollar amounts, if you compare China's military purchasing power with the US, adjusting for different labor costs and the fact that they don't include things like R&D in their military budget, then China is much closer to US spending than it appears.
Having a supply line to Asia versus China fighting close to home, that is a recipe for disaster.
[1] https://www.csis.org/programs/technology-policy-program/surv...
It's worth remembering that World War II was a conflict where one side was fighting on a supply line 4,000 miles long, 3,000 by sea, and the other side was fighting a hundred miles past its own borders. The supply problems in the conflict were mostly concentrated in the latter country.
I can't speak to the quality of the Chinese military, but the US military is regarded as having perhaps the single most effective military logistics in world history.
If you know anything about logistics you'd conclude that the latter had a much harder logistical challenge, especially since the Axis didn't have much of an Atlantic Navy.
The issue of a US v China confrontation is that this won't repeat. The US will not be able to go unopposed in the seas, and it will have to supply with non-naval means.
Also, it's worth remembering that in the case you're talking about, the US against the Axis in Europe, the US was not a major or deciding force, which is a major part of why it was able to afford such extended supply lines. In an alternative scenario where the rest of the Allies were so weak as that the US was the dominant power in the conflict, maintaining those supply lines would have been incredibly difficult.
> "The Other Side" was fighting on four fronts at their borders, and had supply lines a thousand miles long on ground
Do remember that it's basically fighting the same enemy on all the fronts (who have the same this-is-not-close issue as Germany). In the one case where it's different, keep in mind that Soviet factories were moved east of the Urals to places like Novosibirsk, which is further from Moscow than Berlin is to Moscow.
> the US against the Axis in Europe, the US was not a major or deciding force
The US was about ½-⅔ the total force in Western Front. While the Western Front was smaller than the Eastern Front, the US also played a major role in the supply chain of the USSR--virtually all of the trucks and trains that kept the USSR's war economy running were supplied by the US, which was also supplying Chang Kai-Shek via The Hump (although Britain was responsible for those logistics), while meanwhile reconquering the Philippines and other Pacific islands from the Japanese. And don't forget, most of the US manufacturing is several hundred miles from the coasts (the Great Lakes don't count for transoceanic shipping purposes).
It's not even a secret at all to at least millions of folks across the world. It's only the strange American media and brainwashing system that presents the idea that China can be threatened with force.
In that sense it's highly dubious Beijing is directly involved with Myanmar's current regime change. They can achieve their objectives anyways without getting their hands dirty. Of course there may be intermediaries involved that straddle both camps so it's not clear cut either.
WW3 is of course a different deal but that's way beyond the comfort zone of your run of the mill imperialist.
Personally, like in piloting a drone? It's a good question to ask, to be sure, but its value continues to diminish as more and more tech is deployed in warfare.
Plus there is a whole spectrum of physical intervention if we choose to. E.g. drones, supporting insurgencies, etc... that doesn't even require boots on ground.
This principle would be under R2P responsibility to protect.
Also, killing <s>human beings</s> enemy combatants dispassionately with drones... Not something I'm energetic enough to debate today.