We judge people by their track records. The same applies to countries.
The US' track record is Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
When Chairman Mao made the decision to go into Korea, he did so with the conviction that all imperialists were paper tigers. History proved him right.
The US has neither the political resolve nor the economic capability to wage a protracted war on China's doorsteps.
Even if they somehow could, redeploying their global forces to fight China in the Pacific means the US would effectively cease to exist as a hegemon, as Russia, Iran, ISIS and al-Qaeda would all take advantage of this. The best case scenario then for the US would be to take China down with it.
Of course that's assuming it is even capable of redeployment in the first place, which is something that has never been in the cards in the first place.
I do agree that track records are important, and the last time that the US faced a peer competitor in a high intensity air-naval conflict on a war of attrition was imperial Japan.
Other conflicts that the US had engaged in since WWII either have not involved peer competitors (i.e.: the US lacks the geopolitical rationale for a protracted conflict where it is willing to commit the entirety of its forces in a total war of annihilation), nor have they been air-naval in nature.
If the USA considers such an option, Russia will consider it imperative to bring down the USA in response for going after their better then a alliance partner because they will be next in the event of a fabled US victory and I cannot see how the USA would want to risk such a scenario on any level if they engage China over Taiwan.
Also a air naval conflict isn’t going to be something that China is going to allow given the myriad of counter measures along with being one of two nations with working hypersonic weapons. in the event of such a build up, China and Russia would be literally brain dead not to use them against the USA and its assets in order to wipe them out and such the USA lose a bulk of their military assets in the pacific, it would take decades if not more to rebuild them, which means China and Russia has the time to destroy the rest of the USA military to ensure such a scenario never happens. All this is contingent on whether the USA is willing to start this fight of which they already are in Ukraine with the USA fighting tooth and nail to force Russia to make the first move, using lies to basically kick off a conflict like they did in Iraq, which like every other conflict they have gotten into is guaranteed not to be as smooth sailing as you would believe it would be.
hubris seems to be a constant for the USA, but much of this can the USA sustain until they simply cannot do so any more
Any air-naval conflict would of course involve the use of hypersonic weapons by all sides who have them.
Hypersonic weapons however are a strike system that offers a high chance of successfully penetrating defenses, and if a war occurred today, neither China nor Russia have that many hypersonic weapons in their inventory.
If Russia chooses to make a move while the US redeploys its forces in the western pacific, that is certainly a possibility. Chances are Russia would make moves in Europe, where it would be dependent on European NATO countries to try to fend off a Russian offensive. Russia might contribute what little forces they have to a western pacific conflict as well, but by that point the US will almost certainly enlist the help of Japan and Korea against Chinese and Russian forces in the pacific.
Unfortunately that is all still not a very favourable situation for China, as the US may well be quite willing to allow its client states and allies in Europe and East Asia to bear significant losses if they are all collectively able to inflict losses on Chinese and Russian forces while allowing the US to preserve the relative security and invulnerability of the continental US.
Look -- my overall persisting position throughout the last couple of weeks is this:
however we game this out, I believe there is no substitute for the PLA but to require itself to have the capability of wholesale defeating US forces in a manner whereby the US simply does not have the material capability to wage a war of attrition/total war against China even if they had the resolve to.
I do not think the above requirement should be a controversial one, as it is the only option in which the full range of realistic material factors and assumptions can be accounted for, to ensure that victory can be attained (or at least defeat avoided) if the US does have the resolve to fight a war of attrition/total war and the geopolitical boldness to redeploy its global forces against China.
