It would seem to me that we hold their economic fate. If they were to attack our assets in a serious way, we would just repudiate all debt held by them, nationalize any holdings in the US and cease doing business with them.
I expect that the US’s close allies would follow suit (but these days who knows). We’d have to make do for a while, re-learn manufacturing, etc..
It would hurt them a lot more than us as their standard of living crashes and ours dips.
So true. When you owe the bank a million $, they own you. But when you owe the bank trillions $, you own the bank.