Besides, most of the US wars in the last half century have been started because the US was dependent on another nation. It seems a self-sufficient US may actually be less likely to go to war.

Isn't China in exactly that position?

Review the precedent. The argument that economic linkage would prevent warfare was first raised prior to World War I. Global and Continental trade failed to prevent proxy conflict in Africa, the Baltics, and all out conflict across all of Europe. Britain and Germany had a level of trade and codependent exchange far greater that of modern day China and the United States.

Not to mention that the United States and China have fought and are continuing to fight proxy conflict today in the Sudan, northern India, Vietnam, Burma, Thailand, and North Korea.

Your theory has been tested. It is false.

To assume that the United States and China simply cannot engage in warfare is a dangerous delusion. And I assure you, it is not a delusion shared by the Chinese government.

War with China would be extremely painful, every single item that modern life depends upon apart from food will suddenly become scarce. That acts as a powerful deterrent.

I copied and pasted it below

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I care about avoiding war and avoiding exploitation.

Historically, the best way to avoid major wars, is to have a major power or an allies of power (possible in multipolar word), or strong enough attack power(nukes) to scare off the idea of war -- i.e a strong enough deterrent to make going war be a bad idea. No one wants to go to war if they know they will be destroyed. Like how a robber won't rob a house if they know a person with a gun will be waiting for them.

So if we want to avoid the loss of life on the scale of the world wars, then we need to avoid massive conflict between the major powers (who have the greatest destructive power by definition). Since they are major powers, with long alliances, a conflict with the U.S. and China would involve at least, U.S, China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Taiwan, the NATO countries of Europe, Canada. It's also very likely that it would involve Russia, India, Pakistan, Australia. Other countries that may be dragged in for strategic purposes would be essentially every country in Asia (including southeast Asia), North America, and the Middle East/any sources of oil.

The disruption to the balance of power, is extremely dangerous. That is the cause of war. It's creates such a powerful economic and political incentive to maintain dominance by obliterating the competition. Imagine your friendly giant corporation and their tendency to value money over everything, if they were allowed to kill their competition and killing them would lead to those sweet monopoly profits, do you think are moral enough to not just not just kill their competition instead of doing all that hard work of economic competition?

The fact that there's a strong chance of war is what concerns me so much about a rising China. Both the U.S. and China has the huge prize of being the dominant power if they destroy the other.

To maintain peace and avoid a huge loss of life, there has to be a big enough deterrence to make war not appealing. They each have to compete immensely in order to make the deterrence strong enough. This is why the U.S. and Soviet Union had an arms race. They also have to compete economically, so they can fund their defense.

Now, lets say war is avoided, and power is more evenly distributed. By definition, that means the U.S. has less influence than others do. Then should another country do something that exploits the U.S., then by definition we have less power to stop that. This could be some trade deals that hurt the U.S. economy (i.e. jobs, and livelihoods of people) to the extreme of war against an alliance far stronger than us.

I agree that the U.S. has done some horrible things during it's hegemony, and I do not support them. But the brutal reality is that, others would do the same to us.

I think the best case scenario is that we avoid war and reach a new stable/peaceful balance of power, and the many now powerful countries provide healthy competition to the U.S. while still bringing wealth to themselves and their people. For the sake of my country and it's people, I hope the we the U.S. is still powerful enough to defend ourselves from foreign exploitation, competitive enough to prosper in that world, and free enough to enjoy the rights that many in countries like China do not.

> The world pulling its supply chain out of China would be the end of the Chinese economy.

I'm not so sure this is true. China has a huge domestic market, and even more potential to build it up more. It's also likely that in such a scenario, a whole block of nations would form, replacing some if not much of China's output with war efforts as it happens in a WW.

Let's just hope it never comes to this, really, for the sake of our daughters and sons if not ourselves.

Both arguments seem far-fetched. War with one’s neighbors is never guaranteed, even though there’s a risk of it. And they’d have to spend an unrealistically huge portion of their gdp on border defense for that to make development impossible.

Obviously China is dependent on world trade. What’s laughable is not reading what I wrote, in that China can afford to lose trade ties with one or two nations, although not all at the same time. Whereas no single country can afford to lose China. That gives China the high ground - it can threaten any single country with a boycott. And it has done so successfully.

One could have said this about the U.S. and Germany in 1927.

I don't think war between the U.S. and China is likely, and I certainly hope it would never happen because no one would win that, but I don't think that argument has historic validity.

We love our cheap goods, cheap-ish energy and ability to change presidents and prime ministers.

Yes China, North Korea and Russia banding against the rest of the world is a real threat but China has shown it is selfish too and cares more about its economy.

> If you buy the second theory, then the major reason there is no war between the US and China or Russia is because they don't believe they can win (which is probably true, as long as the US doesn't try to invade).

There’s also the issue that even for the winner, a war is probably net negative for its people.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231748269_Rationali... has interesting reasoning on how we can still get war even if states would prefer not to.

By your logic, China should have to worry about the USA, Russia, etc, Russia about the USA, China, etc.

Let's write that in equation form:

  U >= C + R
  C >= R + U
  R >= U + C

Like, say Panama has a civil war that shuts down the canal. That adds a huge cost to shipping, going around South America. Or say Europe (but not the US) gets involved in a war with Russia, redirecting the _massive_ European manufacturing capacity to local needs instead of exports.

You're right, war is less likely among nations with strongly linked economies. The important thing to note is that, at the same time, the survival self-interest of a county to dominant the other does not go away.

Which means that economic interdependence only helps avoid war so long as war itself doesn't provide more benefits.

China loved the idea that was popular in the the US of "peaceful" rising China, it meant people ignored the long term strategic threats militarily.

China has risen economically, and now they are aiming to have a military more powerful than the U.S.. They are also growing their influence in South America and Africa to get new markets, resources, and ultimately get rid of the dependence on the US market.

So, the dependence helped deter war in the short-term, but the economic gains let China position them better to serve the self-interest of being dominant.

US+EU+allies can probably manufacture all the war machines they need, as does China+allies.