by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog:

The U.S. cannot afford a war with China.  The size of our military has been shrinking, and our resources are stretched way too thin.  Today, the U.S. has military bases in 80 different countries, and we have troops stationed in 178 different countries.  That is insane.  No empire in the entire history of humanity has had forces spread all over the planet like this.  Our ammunition levels are extremely low due to major conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, and every war game that our leaders have conducted has shown us losing a war to protect Taiwan.  So we should be trying to avoid sparking a war with China, because we are holding a losing hand.