No, America enjoys a state of nuclear primacy vis-a-vis China. There's debate as to whether America could destroy all of Russia's retaliation capability in a first strike, but China would be a slam-dunk. Moreover, even if each sides' nuclear forces are sufficient to prevent a direct conflict, that just raises the issue of proxy wars, as we saw in the Cold War. It's certainly not the case that ICBMs have made military power irrelevant to geopolitics.
Nuclear primacy is not relevant...they own us. When was the last time you saw an American politician do anything to interfer with the whims of the Chinese government?
Not sure exactly what you are saying, but will comment anyway:
I am not sure China has the ability to launch nuclear weapon warhead cruse missles from submerged submarines as US has had for more than a decade, but they do have subs at least capable of launching nuclear warhead rockets. Admittedly these subs are terrible noisy and US attack subs probably constantly have them within range.
China is now building a second generation of nuclear subs. - One of the Indian financial newspapers I read at least weekly claimed to have a photo of the first, but did not post that photo on its internet web page with the story.
In any case, it is no doubt true that US could destroy China (send it back to the start of the industral age) but it would not be a free "slam dunk". For example, China will orbit the moon in the next few months and can easily take out the US's top 10 cities in their "first strike."
China has no desire to do this as knows full well that such action would send them back to a pre-industral age. China still needs to sell to the US, although such sales are already dropping. More of China's production is, as I predicted long ago, being consumed domestically and used to pay for the importation of raw material, energy and food stocks every year.
Likewise, China's ability to destroy the US economically (Still now possible only with consideral self-inflicted economic pain.) is rapidly growing every year. China is clearly winning this "economic war," but as Quadraphonics often points out to me, US has about a 6 to 1 lead in GDP etc. still.
If US GDP growth continues slowing, even turnning negative as many now think a real posibility. (Greenspan's most recent estimate of recession is ">1/3chance.") and China's middle class continues to grow in numbers by more than 1 million every month and their indivual purchasing power continues to double every 3 or less years. (Salries rise rapidly there now.) - China is not a cheap labor producer of shirts and shoes etc. now but transforming to high value added products like computers, digital cameras etc. (Look where yours was made - nearly 100% of world's computer production is from China now, and they make more than 1/2 of all the cell phones etc. )
Just yesterday in paper I read that China now has 100 US dollar billionares. Cheung Yan leads the list with 3.4 billion. In 2005 there were only 7 dollar billionares in all of China! (1/3 of the 100 are CP members. The Chinese CP has 72 million members.) No one knows for sure, but at least 1000 Chinese now have net worth of 100 million dollars. More multi-million dollar homes are going up in China than all the rest of the world. I.e., as I have somewhat obnoxiously been saying (to get people to wake up to the changing realities):
Some day in the not too distant future, China will find it to its economic advantage to tell US:
Go to hell - we do not need you to buy our production any more. Your green pieces of paper are "worthless." Our sovern funds (backed by ownership of real assets, instead of US Treasury paper) is where our reserves are now.
I.e. China will be able to trigger a run on the dollar with little domestic pain in about a decade. That will send the US and EU into deep depression, if GWB's gross mismanagement of the economy and war costs have not already done so. (I continue to predict GWB will first: i.e. the run on dollar to be between Halloween of 2008 and 2014 - the 6 year window of my prediction made some years ago.)
When US and EU are in deep depression, their demand for (and ability to pay for) oil and other items China is importing in even greater quantity than today, will cost China less than if the US and EU economies were healthy. - That saving will be much greater that the loss of value of the relative few US Treasurey bonds China is still holding in its reserves. - I.e. destroying the US economically will be a "no brainer" choice for China in about a decade.
