I am absolutely sure once carrier groups start going down America would panic. I think they might even make the calculus that a limited nuclear strike would not be enough to provoke a full nuclear response, especially if they think China would be reticent to start a full nuclear war for humanitarian reasons.
Yeah if you analyse the USA as you would a child you come to the same answer.
When me and my sibling were very young, I was older and hence bigger and ostensibly more mature than my younger sibling. If my younger sibling wasn’t getting their own way they’d worked out they could punch me in a non-sensitive location (shoulder, thigh etc) and I wouldn’t be able to respond other than verbally as mom would be angry at me.
I feel like the USA would be the same as my younger sibling, in the case of not getting their own way, they would go nuclear, but rather than trying to nuke Beijing and the rest, it would try to do a limited number of strikes on maybe a key port with a large Chinese naval presence, power or fuel or ammunition manufacturing etc to level the score. Then they would hope that after this limited strike, their opponents would be forced to show restraint, much like me and my sibling with the threat of mom being mad, but for America and China the threat of ‘mom’ would literally be M.A.D.
I am absolutely sure once carrier groups start going down America would panic. I think they might even make the calculus that a limited nuclear strike would not be enough to provoke a full nuclear response, especially if they think China would be reticent to start a full nuclear war for humanitarian reasons.
that’s basically what the RAND paper I linked below argues as well
Yeah if you analyse the USA as you would a child you come to the same answer.
When me and my sibling were very young, I was older and hence bigger and ostensibly more mature than my younger sibling. If my younger sibling wasn’t getting their own way they’d worked out they could punch me in a non-sensitive location (shoulder, thigh etc) and I wouldn’t be able to respond other than verbally as mom would be angry at me.
I feel like the USA would be the same as my younger sibling, in the case of not getting their own way, they would go nuclear, but rather than trying to nuke Beijing and the rest, it would try to do a limited number of strikes on maybe a key port with a large Chinese naval presence, power or fuel or ammunition manufacturing etc to level the score. Then they would hope that after this limited strike, their opponents would be forced to show restraint, much like me and my sibling with the threat of mom being mad, but for America and China the threat of ‘mom’ would literally be M.A.D.
accurate