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"Win" is a bit of a misnomer in terms of warfare. You really need to think more in terms of a military force reaching specific objectives, as "Win" is far too ambiguous. As an example, in this hypothetical war, is victory for the US declared by GWB standing on the steps of the Chinese Communist Party headquarters with an M16 and his dick in his hand, or is it defined by the Americans defending their home territory tooth and nail from land invasion by two well-armed aggressors?
Further than this, are we talking about this conflict occuring tomorrow, using the exact lineup of military capacity and distribution of forces as they are right now? Or is it a mythical situation where the Americans get the chance to bring all their forces home and start from scratch?
Ok, even though speculating on these sorts of things is futile, here goes: If the war happened tomorrow morning, the Yanks would surely be stretched defending the Pacific. The NKs have no working delivery platforms for nukes, and they're about the only ones you'd think were crazy enough to actually want to shoot one at anyone. The Chinese, as someone mentioned earlier, have a very large land force, but it is mostly geared for defence, and mobilizing it for a land invasion would present a significant challenge. The Americans don't have the land forces to effectively fight in two theatres (Iraq AND the eastern Pacific), and so would have to pick one and withdraw from the other, or draft (which would only work should the Chinese be the aggressors - a little something to stir up some patriotic spirit).
Any attempted invasion by either side on to the other's soverign territory would be devestating in terms of life lost, and if it was the aggressor in the conflict doing the invading, so vastly condemned bythe international community that it seems quite fuckin' retarded to even contemplate it happening. Remember, each of these nations needs to trade with the rest of the world after the conflict, and the chinese aren't going to be selling too many TVs to the Brits when they're stomping over the crushed skulls of 200 million dead American citizens.
All of this, of course, is presuming that this war occured in a political vacuum. What is far, far more likely is that every nation on the planet would be polarized in to action overnight, at which point, well, what happens is anyone's guess. I'm putting money down on We're All Fucked.
In all reality, if it ACTUALLY came to a US / Cino armed conflict? They'd shoot a few missiles at each other, there'd be a lot of aggressive rhetoric, and then it'd all get sorted out by the diplomats and politicians. The chances of the world's two superpowers really going balls out for each other, particularly in this day and age of the Internet and global communities just seems ridiculous.
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