If the United States began an armed conlifct with China what nation would win?

Question

consider our airforce, the troop levels, and anything else. It's an intresting idea and it should be discussed.

I forgot one more thing. If it was purely pre emptive on the part of China the USA could use NATO because of their "An attack on one is an attack on all" agreement. How would France, U.K., France, and a host of other nations efect the final outcome as well.

Answer 1

I dont want to sound like a skeptic, but your question is slightly vague. For a number of reasons. Firstly, the biggest reason is this. Where would this war take place? In the U.S? Mainland China? There are many facets or attributes that we arent taking into consideration. I would firstly before asking this question set the stage for where this war would take place. I think from there I would sit and make a list of potential allies to both sides. Conflicts have the ugly downside where they tend to draw other parties into the strife.

Did you know that Operation Barbarossa conducted by the German Military during world war 2 still stands as the largest land invasion of all time. We arent talking half a million soldiers, we're talking about over a million crossing into the plains of Russia. The initial successes were stalled due to peasant and guerilla actions in the rear echelons. The local population is the most important factor in any land battle, they control the pace of who wins. If they support, there is victory, if they dont, its a prolonged and inevitable loss.

This being said, China and the Russians, how good are their relations? Again, China's relations with India? You have to take into consideration all of the large armed nuclear countries that surround the potential battle stage. The United States has allies in both Pakistan & India, but they would never fight side by side, in fact, India would never take the offensive. China has great relations with many of the south east asian countries they supported in their many wars and communist coup's over the years. Sadly there is no definitive answer to who would be there to aid in their war.

From a purely military perspective, I think the United States would be the potential winner. My reasoning behind this is because firstly, the United States can be found in more countries in the world compared to the military of China. We can strike them from a lot more places than they can potentially strike us. We then also control the sea's, our Navy is superior to theirs. The battle in the skies would be interesting but I think out of sheer combat experience and equipment levels we would edge them out, barely.

On the ground, the tactical advantage lies with the Chinese military and the sheer size of their Infantry. They would swarm any of our units on the ground, 10 to 1. It would boil down to a matter of strategy and coordination. Who is better at coordinating tanks, with air strikes and artillery into concentrated positions? I would say, from mostly a strategic and combat experience perspective, we would end up winning, however, they would do enough damage to our military and our infrastructure that we wouldnt have the resources to wage a large scale war again for a decade.

If we talk strictly nuclear, the United States with the largest arsenal in the world would win, although suffering huge population loss at the hands of opposing strikes. Who knows. Its a sad process of thought. I'll end there, any further and we go into uncharted territory that is too destructive to consider.

Answer 2

No one. There are no winners in a war, only survivors.

The answer that you are probably wanting to ask is which Military would be most likely to survive an armed conflict.

Well, it would depend on tactics and goal.
1. If the US had the goal of conquering China, we would probably be defeated. - The Chinese government barely controls China. China is too large to effectively rule. As such, any invader would have a very difficult time achieving this. Even the Mongols failed to conquer China. They became Chinese...

2. If the US had the goal of destroying the current government in China we could prevail. As stated above, the Chinese Government barely controls China. A well trained & diciplined terrorist orginization could take down the Chinese government.

3. If China sought to attack the US on our soil, they would be destroyed. Their military does not have the proper logistics to pull that off.

4. If this is just people killing eachother in a fantasy world because they have nothing else to do... The US has more nukes.

Answer 3

We would probably end up bombing each other into the stone age. Nigeria would end up becoming the economic world superpower.

Nuke vs. nuke, the US definitely has an advantage. China has several hundred old generation ICBMs capable of delivering a nuclear payload to the United States... with our countermeasures [including the ones that we have but do not tell anyone about], only a few would make it through. The US has several thousand modern-cutting-edge ICBMs capable of delivering nuclear payloads to China -- and China doesn't have any worthwhile countermeasures in place.

Answer 4

No one would "win" an armed conflict between China and the USA.
If you don't believe me, try talking to the relatives of veterans who died fighting in WW II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. You might also try reading Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the US" to find out the real motivations and reasons behind all of the other wars fought by the U.S. if you think that a war with China is an "interesting" idea.

Answer 5

It would depend on a number of different things. The only possible scenario i can see is if North Korea invaded the south, forcing us to intervene because of our defense pact with south korea. And forcing china to help because of their defense pact with North Korea. If it actually happened, I think that China would fight a conventional war until it got to the point that that was unfeasible. It would take time, resources and a ridiculous cost in human lives, but the US would be able to establish air and maritime superiority, It would be our forces on the ground that would take the worst beating simply due to the numerical superiority of the enemy. However, its simply my opinion, that once air and sea superiority was lost, and their infantry is at the mercy of our ships, aircraft and cruise missiles, they would result to using tactical nuclear weapons with a low kiloton yield. Now, i dont want to speculate how we would respond to this, but it would result in an uneasy truce after the pointless expenditure of hundreds of thousands of lives, or we would respond in turn, and everyones worst nightmare of nuclear holocaust would finally come to fruition. Either way, god help us all.

Answer 6

China

Answer 7

I would not want to be in the winning camp or losing camp. Both nations have Long range nukes and it only takes about 20 or so to mess up both nations forever. And for those that think we can hit China faster than they can hit us, remember this, the Chinese have lasers that can mess up our satelites and communications in an instant.

Peace,

Answer 8

We would both lose.

The US doesn't have the manpower to invade China. China does not have the navy to invade the US. That leaves strategic bombing and ICBMs and not much left. Although we could kill a billion Chinese and that would leave them with more people than currently live in the USA.

Answer 9

Well after the first day, the draft would be in effect and thousends of young men would be in combat after a short bootcamp. But, in my opinon, there wouln't be much left of either country after the A Bombs started dropping. Lets hope that cooler heads prevail.

Answer 10

China.