No. The US should look to the late 1970s to 1992 for guidance. The fall of the Soviet Union was no accident. It was arranged. Or rather, the US gave it a hard shove at a delicate time.
(1) The USSR went through 4 leaders in 3 years, leading to a highly unstable internal political situation.
(2) The USSR was stuck in an highly inconclusive war it could barely afford in Afghanistan
(3) The USSR's economy was in decline due to the fall in oil prices. After the 1973 arab oil embargo, the West diversified. This lead to a production surge and falling prices that struck the USSR's coffers.
(4) Anti-Communist forces across Eastern Europe were growing as Russia's puppet states destabilized.
This is broadly speaking, the situation. Now for the shoves.
(1) The US exploited the lack of coherent Soviet Policy to the US through the change of Soviet leadership by beginning a massive arms buildup (that the Soviets couldn't afford) and didn't think about getting into too carefully. Had the Soviet Union been through more stable leadership, it would have been less quick to get into the arms race
(2) The US armed the Mujahideen to terrible effect in Afghanistan, and went out of its way to break the aura of invincibility of the Red Army.
(3) The US spent much of the 1970s and 1980s working to peel of the Soviet Union's middle eastern allies. Coupled with CIA sabotage against Russian oil pipelines, Russia's ability to make money was broken beyond repair.
(4) The US aggressively assisted these anti-communist forces.
I'm not describing a military conflict towards China, but things like the above: put ourselves in such a position, and do what we can to engineer difficulties for China. And then when enough pieces are in place, hit them all at once.
The Soviet Union was utterly besieged in the 1980s. On top of that throw in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Throw in the advances in computers that the USSR was behind on. Had Afghanistan been in the 1960s or Chernobyl never have happened, perhaps the Soviet Union wouldn't have been as weak. It was the summation of all the stressors which brought it down.
That's the model to China.
The good news is, there is every reason to believe China will do our work for us in one particular regard. China is building a modernized military. It will want to use it, somewhere, in the next 10-20 years, to gain lessons on how effective the new technologies work with the doctrines and strategies built around them. The US did something very similar to this in Panama, prior to the Gulf War, that exposed shortcomings that were addressed in time for the larger conflict.
Wherever that intervention on China's part is, we need to make sure that it's their Afghanistan. None of this Obama Administration bullshit that won't give anti-air weapons to Syrian Rebels. That goal won't be to win, but to make the Chinese expend more military power to save face.
Ideally this would be timed with a sharp decline in the Chinese economy, a recent change in leadership, and some engineered (sabotaged) humilation disasters for China like a damn "accidentally" breaking or something and flooding the country side.
That is how we should go about it. Make them feel like they're spinning too many plates at once. But that's YEARS down the line. We're not remotely ready for it.
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I just need to say something reading over this thread.
Over the years here, I've been called a 'neocon' many times, usually by people who don't know the first thing about what actual neocons believe and want, nor what I believe or want. But the real 'neocons' so to speak (or more accurately, their spiritual cousins) are the posters in this thread who would get us into a spat or a conflict with China (or anybody else) without thinking very carefully about the second and third order implications of such a policy at the present.
People should never forget: the Iraq War as a popular war in the US. A very popular war. It was launched with a 73% approval rating, that surged to 85% when the Third Infantry Division took Baghdad (everybody lives a winner). It's support remained relatively high until just after Hurricane Katrina, which was the proverbial "straw" so to speak as the Iraqi insurgency worsened over 2004, 2005, and 2006, making the Bush Administration look wholly incompetent. In 2004, Bush was soundly re-elected and rightfully took his pro-war platform as a mandate. Say what you will about what the war became later, but a LOT of people, myself included by the way, enthusastically supported a war with dubious ends, for many years.
And what became of that war? A trillion plus dollars on dubious ends? A military that was sapped of power as it was forced to downgrade it's conventional deterrence skills to focus on Counter Insurgency? To halve the US's military advantage on it's rivals? To alienate us from our allies for years? To destabilize the wider middle east?
In 2003 we used our power extremely recklessly because 9/11 gave this country something to prove, and it cost is dearly in lives, in dollars, in equipment and in time. Wars of choice are not necessarily disqualify nor a poor use of power, but a war of choice without a clear and achievable outcome in mind is dangerous and ruinous.
To those folks clapping for any kind of confrontation with China today, in 2016, I would implore you to think from a policy perspective, very carefully about what the second and third order effects are. Rosy scenarios got us into the Iraq mess. What are the hard cases for China scenarios?
As I've said elsewhere in the thread, I do want a confrontational relationship with China... when we're ready. In 2016, we're not nearly ready. We're year 4 into a 16 year plan to be ready. This is not some silly showdown with some Arab dictator... this is the defining geopolitical struggle of the 21st century... and this stuff with Russia and Ukraine, or ISIS or Trump... this is the pre-game show. It will not compare to what is ahead, when the world's most technologically advanced, power and richest nation clashes with the world's most populous and second richest, both with very strong nationalist streaks.
Power is a resource. It must be carefully maintained. It must be rebuilt when spent, and when spent, spent for the sake of eventually gaining more power. The Iraq War in retrospect, was an utterly foolish expendiature of our power. We blew so much of it and walked away overall weaker in ways we still haven't recovered from.
Those looking for a fight with China in 2016 would do well to consider where American power is today, and where it will be. We have time. We have a slew of shorter term challenges ahead of us and dealing with them in a parallel nature may be impossible. How, after running this gauntlet and expending power, will we be ready for China on the other side of it? That is the question.
Do not taken American power in any form for granted. Gaining it in the first place was the lifes work of generations of very smart, ambitious, worldly Americans. We're just custodians of it. If we want to pass it on to our kids one day, and not have a world where China occupies its geopolitical center, we need to think carefully about how we are going to spend our own to beat them.