> Never, never, underestimate any enemy. <
The West has always underestimated Asian powers. And that never went well. A prime example of that is the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905. Little upstart Japan knocked the snot out of Imperial Russia.
Oops. Maybe I shouldn’t have said “And that never went well.” The West did win the Opium Wars (something that angers China to this day).
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“Little upstart Japan knocked the snot out of Imperial Russia.”
Well, they were very smart and won one key naval engagement basically destroying the Russian fleet. And since that Russian fleet had spent a year sailing around Europe and Africa so it could get to the fight, Russia was in no position to continue fighting. It was a great upset victory for Japan, but I wouldn’t really call it a “snot kicking” scenario, since the whole thing was over very soon after that first engagement.
In today’s global situation, it seems to me that China is the most likely country to receive such a surprise defeat, since they have spent a lot of time and money building up a navy, but they don’t have any relevant modern naval experience. So they could very well lose that navy in the first engagement and then be unable to engage in any conflict outside their immediate borders.