Despite gloomy predictions that the U.S. could lose a war with China in the South China Sea, the reality is that the U.S. military has all the weapons to defeat its Chinese counterpart, though the cost in lives and the subsequent political and economic fallout from a war of that magnitude would be devastating. There is also the unquantifiable and horrifying possibility that a conventional conflict could spiral into a nuclear exchange, which would impact all life on Earth.
When warnings were made in Congress this year that America could lose a war with China or Russia, the immediate reaction in many sections of the media was to assume the worst and to focus on a potential conflict with China as the most likely one to occur in the near future. It is true, of course, that there is a greater risk of a war breaking out in the South China Sea than one with Russia in Eastern Europe.
One with China would spread quickly into the Pacific region. In recent years, China had been militarizing the South China Sea through which 100,000 merchant ships pass annually. China regards the South China Sea as its own, its aim being to control all the energy resources within it to the exclusion of the rights of neighboring countries like Vietnam. But the Chinese military strategy has a dual purpose. In placing bases and advanced weaponry on islands throughout the South China Sea, it is preparing for a conflict with the U.S. military. The islands would not only be a defensive chain to create a barrier between mainland China and the Pacific, but a staging ground for the Chinese to use their massive arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles to attack U.S. bases like Guam and U.S. aircraft carriers.