EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The US is no longer the country that recovered from the Pearl Harbor disaster and won WWII, or that both morally and economically sustained itself throughout its prolonged ideological conflict with the Soviet Union. The people of the once great country are confused and disoriented. Once America’s feet of clay crumble, the colossus will never rise again.
As the New Cold War between the US and China heats up, most articles and papers analyzing the situation are concerned with the relative military might of the two sides. Every destroyer, every drone is counted to determine if China has the ability to defeat the US in a hypothetical military engagement. This is an important question, but there are two other questions of much greater significance considering the current balance of power: 1) Can China deliver a devastating yet non-debilitating strike; and 2) How will the people of the great democracy react?
Comparing the current confrontation between the US and China to the Cold War is only partially correct. China does have many political similarities to the Soviet Union, but while the Soviet Union was a socialist experiment in a perpetual economic coma, China’s economy is the second-strongest in the world.