I doubt that many of the armchair strategists commenting on the coming conflict between China and the United States have thought through how many Chinese, American, and Taiwanese service members and civilians would be killed. They may not have imagined the extent to which the Chinese Communist Party would see itself as fighting for its very survival in such a war or understood how a conventional war could thus easily escalate into one involving weapons of mass destruction if Chinese forces began to lose. These are the sort of real-world considerations that should inform public debate in both
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