Originally Posted by
tartare
I often wake at 3am - and reach for my iPhone.
I expect in the next decade to read a headline at that time - Reports of nuclear strikes.
It'll start as a skirmish over Taiwan - the Chinese will then damage or sink a US capital ship - with reciprocal strikes.
The Chinese will lose most of their navy and air force, and then will decide there's nothing left to lose, and use a nuclear weapon or two.
Pine Gap will certainly be hit, east coast airbases, and I'll hear and feel the warhead that hits Garden Island a few kilometres away.
A US city or two will be burnt.
And at that point my friends - the US will go utterly berserk - and burn the whole east coast of China.
Thus history repeats...
That is the optimistic view.
The number of warheads US intelligence indicates are available to China substantially exceeds the number of large US cities.
So to assume that China would accept an unbalanced exchange seems implausible to me.
Of course, the other perspective is that China is improving its forces so much more rapidly than the US that in another decade, they will have clear cut dominance in their neighborhood.
Assuming Xi is patient, he can expect to prevail without firing a shot.