You guys all realize this whole Russian thing and both the Mob & the Russians seizing control of our government is a prelude to war, right? You guys realize it’s probably only going to escalate from here?
It depends on how things go with China's rise into imperialism. The world is scrambling to see which countries will take which side which makes elections and coups all the more important.
We've certainly entered a new cold war though. China's geopolitical position is very similar to the what the US position was around the time of the Monroe Doctrine. The semantics of Chinese imperialism are debatable, but they're mid-stride toward world-scale militarism, that's my point. They will need allies though as even with Russia's help, they'd never defeat the US navy and much less a US-Japan alliance. It would have to be nuclear.
The Russian navy is almost literally a bunch of brush shined turds. It's a bunch of painted rust and old guns, but they are professional.
The Chinese navy is certainly transforming into something formidable but even at this rate, it would take them years to catch up. Currently, their strategy is little more than "more missiles than we can shoot down". This may sound effective, but for an example of how absurd it is, try throwing rocks at cats running around in a football stadium from the parking lot. That's not an unfair description of the chances of hitting a moving ship in the PO with a ballistic warhead of any yield. Even with multistage guiding, which can be easily disrupted, they'd be hard pressed to hit a surface ship, much less the silent service. Our subs alone could hold their forces at bay. Sea mines will offer them an early alert to our presence at best. We'd also be crazy to think that Darpa hasn't been working on orbital robotics to defend our sats and destroy theirs. Chinese tech on the other hand is reverse engineered from ours and assembled with materials available.
The US seems to have no interest in a ground war in Asia, even to defend Taiwanese sovereignty. That wouldn't be necessary anyway. If there were any ground war, it would be between India and China in the mountains. India would have their way with Chinese ships in the IO and easily disrupt oil supplies.
The way this would likely all begin is that the Spratly Islands powder keg would ignite. They would have to respond to US antagonism (freedom of nav ops) by attacking a US ship. In order to have any momentum after that, they'd have to take Taiwan completely and open military relations with the Philippines, in order to establish a military presence in both countries. Either of these would be tipping their hand so they can't attack in the Spraty's until after they have a naval presence in both of those countries. Then, they'd have to pull off a pearl harbor on Guam. Only with their reach extended to the line of islands from Kamchatka to Borneo could they hope to prevail against the US and drive us out of the Pacific Ocean. Now add Japan to this equation. They are absolutely reviled in Chinese media. The Chinese hate Japan. Also there's RoK. Just because they wouldn't house our THAADs doesn't mean they'd cede their nation to China and just stop playing K-pop.
With that said, China already struck the first blow. They took the Spratly Islands and installed Duterte so he could rubber stamp it. Maybe the oil there will supply them with oil because they certainly wouldn't get any past India via the IO. They lost their trade relations with Malaysia and Indonesia but may have gained Australia and RoK. An open war with the US would effect all of these relations. Thailand will stay neutral and invite manufacturers (my guess). In the PI, Duterte might take complete control and set things up so that doesn't get reversed. I hear he's talking about naming Marcos as his VP.
In any case, all of the naval forces available to contend with the US would likely not suffice against the silent service alone. In terms of tech, we're 20 years ahead. Our nuclear subs are much faster (maybe not max speed but able to run near silent much faster), quieter and cooler, they'd outperform anyone else's subs hands down. That's aside from the fact that whole of the US Pacific Fleet is bigger than the entire Russian and Chinese fleets combined. We've got our own oil to wage war for years too. It wouldn't be like Iraq. No ground war. If there were a ground war, it wouldn't be a proxy war with stupid rules like Vietnam where they resupply via trails in other countries we can't openly wage war in and we wouldn't have to prop up a puppet in hopes of maintaining a colony. It would be a desperate mad dash like the war with Japan.
If the Communist Party of China is ever going to wage a war, they have to realign world trade in their favor first or just accept that it will never work. It would be another century of humiliation for them. They know that.
