A US-China WW III in 2027?
WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE? God forbid this would actually happen, but recent events and past histories are leading to a massive conflict between the US and China in the coming years, with other countries forced to pick sides. China may have an initial tech advantage while the US would have an advantage in alliances and geography. It may ultimately become a war of attrition, and similar to the ways in which the Allies outproduced and outlasted Germany/Japan in WW II. Complacencies and divisions sown in the West (by our adversaries?) will make it difficult for us to catch up to such a conflict.
Early in the conflict, short-range missiles rained everywhere, and the Chinese-Russo Alliance sought to capture most of Eastern Europe and SE Asia (including Japan). Just as aircraft and tanks eclipsed ships and troops in WW II, missiles and drones were now eclipsing aircraft and tanks. After most of the ships were sunk (including aircraft carriers), there were few places for aircraft to land safely, rendering them of little use. Everyone was afraid that missiles would soon give way to nuclear-tipped ICBMs, in an all-out assault on world population centers. In advance of the conflict, many of the wealthy and educated class moved West, to escape the Russo-Chinese conscription and confiscation. Manufacturing has long-since divided into East-West factions, compelling China to gobble up SE Asian and African mineral and workforce resources. Western Europe, the Americas, and Oceana were the bulwarks of the Western defenses, while India was under constant threat from their belligerent neighbors. Such is the backdrop of the horrible 2027 US/China WW III.
The seeds of this conflict were sown during the Trump years of 2016–2020, and honestly prior, when US presidents Clinton/Bush/Obama mistakenly assumed that China would be a grateful trading partner. A CIA report in 2021 more or less confirmed suspicions that Trump, Flynn, Stone, Manafort and others really were working for the Russians to destabilize Democracy, while the Chinese were busy hacking and infiltrating our tech sector. Everyone kind of looked the other way when a disproportionate amount of manufacturing, including critical communications and defense technologies, started going to China. Meanwhile, China fostered a large trade imbalance and failed to reign in its North Korean ally (which later turned out to be a smokescreen for a large defense build-up and an “oops!” lobbing of missiles at Western targets). China’s construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea also received a slow response, partly because of the failures of Nationalistic puppets such as the Philippine’s Duterte and Trump (who early was in bed with China, perhaps in hopes of personal enrichment).
China would have been better positioned had it a) Waited longer to build up its tech sector or b) Tried to cultivate more allies with benevolence, but strangely c) Gave in to nationalistic, trigger-happy military-industrial minds similar to what Japan and Germany did in the late 30s. This was a critical mistake because it 1) Forced China and Russia to take adjacent countries like the Ukraine/Belarus/Hungary/Malaysia/S. Korea/Indonesia/ Philippines/SE Asia too-early, which raised alarm bells all over the world, 2) Alienated much of the Chinese and Russian diaspora, which pretty much turned against Russo-China and became great spies, and 3) Spread Russo-China’s resources a bit too thin. Russo-China was able to get the full alliance of Iran/Pakistan and the other Mongol/Turkic nations (including Turkey and Kazakhstan), but this was negated by the Western Allies alliance with the Arab and Baltic nations. Much of the fighting was taking place on the “front” which was in Turkey, India, Philippines, Japan, and the Ukraine (sort of like WW II).
Since ships and airfields were taken out early by the various missile systems (many of which were mobile and hard to destroy), the war soon became a game of trying to detect/destroy missile sites with missiles or drones, while simultaneously tweaking the enemy’s satellite networks (which helped guide the missiles). The US had an advantage in submarine mounted missiles, and so a “whack-a-mole” war of missile attrition soon broke out, with each side trying to make more and better-hidden missiles, amidst missile and drone harassment of manufacturing centers. The Western allied missile systems were generally mounted closer to their targets, but there began to be difficulties delivering new missiles to these centers (often in places like Australia or Germany). Drone and missile strikes began to take their toll on Indian/Ukrainian/Philippine population centers, and a sort of stalemate has ensued.
The really strange thing about this new kind of warfare is that troops are no longer the wampum needed to “kill or be killed” and settle scores between nations. Now, after airfields, ships, and munitions factories are destroyed, the victims are simply citizens and buildings (in urban areas, the easiest to target), with the amount of urban damage used to decide who is “winning”. As a result, many population centers have been relocated and hidden, along with their supply lines. Because ships and railroads have become so easy to target, drones are being heavily used for deliveries, with Amazon and Google being conscripted by the US government to help deliver these supplies. Boeing, Lockheed, and Tesla have essentially become conscripted to make missiles, build and protect satellite systems, from several top secret (and mobile) locations. Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and others have been conscripted to wage battle on the Biological weapons front.
Since North American manufacturing centers are generally too far away for accurate missile strikes from Russo China, everyone is afraid that nuclear ICBMs may be launched from North Korea, Siberia, or Western China (less accurate but devastating). Actually though, this is thought to be a mistake as the US and their allies (particularly NATO) are in a much better position to win this kind of a war, having a greater number of ICBMs (especially submarine mounted). Let’s put it this way…as terrible as it sounds, an ICBM strike on New York, Chicago, and LA would quickly be answered by one taking out Pyongyang, Beijing, Shanghai, and Moscow. Russian leaders seem to be aware of this, and have lately been meeting in secret with the Western Allies in hopes of switching sides (ending the war early, and allowing them to gobble up Chinese territories in the peace process…such is the Russian way!)
A few ironies about this war is that environmentalism pretty much went out the window, as in each side’s desperation, fossil-fuels were used greedily to launch powerful weaponry. The exception was that battery powered drones were effectively quiet and efficient, while many manufacturing centers relied heavily on renewables (as fossil fuel was in short supply). All of this was a sort of boon to renewables, if a giant step back on the overall environmental front. As in any great war, there was a massive amount of death, starvation, and human misery. China’s use of biological weapons early in the war (in the form of a re-engineered, highly infectious and deadly Covid variant, for which they had the vaccine au priori) was fortunately met with the Western Allies quick development of their own vaccine. By necessity, this war has accelerated technology for better or worse, and made further divisions between the haves and have-nots. One can only hope that some kind of peace and order will come out of this, and humanity will finally learn to cooperate among themselves.
