The Return of Great Power War: Scenarios of Systemic Conflict Between the United States and China

The authors consider a hypothetical situation in which China is nearing the point of global primacy. Within such a context, the authors explore the prospect of systemic conflict. To help illuminate how such a war might unfold, they examine trends in warfare and geopolitics, the behavior of select past great powers, and patterns in interstate war. From these data, they formulate two scenarios of low- and high-intensity systemic conflict.