Would China Launch a Massive Pearl Harbor-style Attack Against America?

By Dave Majumdar,The National Interest

While tensions between Beijing and Washington remain primarily in the economic realm as the two great powers levy massive tariffs on each other’s exports, as relations continue to sour, those antipathies could spillover into the military realm.

As it currently stands, China and the United States do not see eye-to-eye on a number of issues including Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and its construction of artificial islands in those waters.

There are also tensions between China and the United States over Taiwan, where Beijing considers the island to be a renegade province while Washington has essentially provided Taipei with a de facto security guarantee under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act [3] (TRA).

If tensions between the United States and China were to somehow reach a boiling point during a crisis, there is a possibility that a conflict might break out. However, with both nation fielding long-range precision-guided weapons [4], a war between the two great powers might be fundamentally different than previous engagements between such titans during prior conflicts. Indeed, the capabilities of these new weapons might mean that one side or the other might be tempted to launch a massive preemptive strike [5] to win a swift victory because of the advantages of striking first.

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