Who needs nukes when they’ve got almost 2 billion people? They can just overrun us. Or somewhere else first, and then us.
Numbers, not nukes. The mother of all weapons is the mother.
Will never happen. No one can fight a land war anymore across 3000 miles of ocean. We did in the middle east only because our technology was such that Iraq didn’t have the capability to know we were coming and to stop us once we got in their waters.
We cannot mass the amount of troops needed for a China invasion any more then they can invade the US. It would not go nuclear because even China recognizes MAD. The only way a war between the US and China is won is by the US producing its own energy and bringing back manufacturing capability where we can have a positive trade balance with the world. This will wipe out China as a world power.
Are they walking across the Pacific Ocean to invade? Shanghai to San Francisco requires nine days sailing time one-way at a 25 knot sprint with no port calls; or, twelve hours flight time non-stop coast-to-coast. Logistics is the killer-app of conventional war.
With that said—Alaska’s Aleutian islands are a possible beach-head—the Japanese explored that option.