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even conservative (non propagandistic) estimates put chinas economy eclipsing the us around 2025-2028. even a short war (~2 years) has the possibility of setting back china's gdp >30% and a longer timeline would mean an even bigger hit. it's pretty obvious that the next few years are going to be extremely crucial and the us will not let this chance pass them before its too late. us policy papers put the biggest factor on determining the war with china on the situation with chinas neighbors and the united states has not stopped agitating within those countries to change the odds. most of these countries are extremely economically linked with china as well, so the us is probably getting freaky w some real freakos to undermine that relationship. definitely gonna be a decade of decades.
Don't think GDP is the best way to determine where we are on the timeline of America's desperation to start a war. Even ignoring the fact that GDP is a terrible way of measuring the size of an economy, a larger economy doesn't necessarily mean it's stronger or more stable. Classic example being Russia thriving in all those sanctions even though "it has a pitiful economy smaller than Italy" because Russia's economy is comprised of largely useful things in the context of geopolitical warfare while Italy is pretentious pasta, tourism, overpriced trunks, and designer apparel
The size of China's economy definitely correlates to how well insulated it is against aggression due to a strong manufacturing base and global trade entwinement but it doesn't necessarily have to correlate with how big of a threat it is to America. China has no power projection with its military and can't engage in much offensive economic warfare. China can sanction America but it goes both ways since they would damage their own exports. If China grows its economy by selling more goods to the West that the US doesn't produce themselves, that's not threatening at all
America's economy obviously depends on weaponizing USD hegemony and imperialism in all its forms so a better way to gauge how close we are to war imo is how much damage China is doing to affect America's ability to do those things through their relationship and projects building with the Global South
Predicting the timeline quantitatively, we could probably look at Global South countries' ratio of loans between IMF/World Bank/USA and China, their ratio of trade between the West and China, percentage of USD in foreign reserves, percentage of trade conducted in USD, and the ratio between USA's M2 money supply and inflation/forex rate (to track how effectively they can print money)
We probably get close to war when/if numbers like these start accelerating in the favour of China to a point where the US feels it can't recover (imo much further away when China > USA in GDP). Plaza Accord happened when Japan's GDP was 1/3 of America's but it was clear American exports were not going to recover against Japan's growth by that time. Think the 2025 China surpassing USA in GDP is just watered down economic propaganda for the masses like how USA invaded the Middle East for "oil" when technically it was to control the oil markets and protect the petrodollar
I think the missing parts of your analysis are the populations of the West. Ignoring the bourgeoisie, there's the petite bourgeoisie, the labor aristocracy, the proletariat, and the lumpenproletariat.
The petite bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy has a huge chance of converting their nations to full white nationalist.
The proletariat is a wild card, but also small because there is not much production happening in the West.
The lumpen is pretty huge, getting more militant, have surprisingly kept revolutionary ideas alive, and have an identity that includes historical revolutionary movements.
If the USA sanctions China, China will suffer economically, but they have a massive network and massive population - they will adapt. If China sanctions the USA the social fabric will deteriorate very quickly. Same in Europe. Europe has been trying to get closer to China to avoid the USA isolating them from the productive economies of the world because they know that their people will revolt if they can't get their cheap goods.
The USA seems like it's deliberately building a white nationalist movement to carry it through a social collapse, but Europe is more of a patchwork with some countries building a successful white nationalist movement and others not.
I think a lot of what happens in the next decade really depends on what ends up happening in Africa starting with Niger. If China and Russia are successful in supporting the liberation movements there. If the West risks getting cut off from both raw materials and finished goods, the only option they will have is proxy warfare simultaneously in Africa, Europe, and South America. Given the history of guerilla success against Western military doctrine, conflict on 3 continents will be unmanageable and if the West attempts it they will burn through their reserves too quickly. It will still be a decade of bloodshed, but the internal conflicts will be the sharpest they have ever been in the history of the West and I'ma West will be at its lowest production levels in history. I think these two things are going to be critical components of the next 2 decades of history.
Potential conflict between US and Africa is kinda weird for me right now. For years I was confident that the next big hot war would be in that continent after the Middle East for the reasons you listed but it ended up being in Ukraine instead. And tracking the American troop deployments atm, they're largely concentrated near China and more recently, Iran
I wonder if the failures in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq has caused the US to switch focus and target the kings directly. Or possibly the presence of French and Wagner soldiers are deterring them away
The most hope I have ever felt was when the US intelligence apparatus tries and failed to create second and third fronts against Russia in the caucauses, followed by the coup in Niger which signalled that not only did the West not have control but that Russia was capable, with a much smaller military, of maintaining three objectives simultaneously (Ukraine, reserved homeland defenses, material support for Niger and others).
My best guess on how it's come to this is that the USSR, despite all it's failures, was perfectly suited to a) defending the homeland militarily and b) outperforming Western intelligence including spy hunting. I think China intelligence likely collaborated with the KGB to develop similar spy hunting capabilities even during the split, and the PLA demonstrated how to safely break Western indoctrination and maintain loyalty. I think these things have created the conditions to outperform the US on intelligence in some dimensions, obviously not all.
My continued hope is that the US does not have the intelligence it needs to outmaneuver the global resistance, though we know full well they are more than equipped to completely outmaneuver domestic threats.
oop yea i didnt mean to say that war was coming by 2025-2028 but rather that there's definite and clear evidence that at some point china will eclipse the US as the world's hegemon, and the US won't let that happen. tbh itll be hard to say when a direct war with china will ever break out, but we know for a fact that it is already being fought in the periphery. the war between china and the us will be determined by the international situation as we can see with things like the indo pacific framework solidifying an economic-political-military alliance between the us, japan, india and australia aimed at surrounding china. the host of allegiances between the two poles will probably be the brunt of the violence until the situation severely deteriorates.
both sides it looks like are trying to play the long game, so idk if anybody could really make an accurate prediction, but you make a lot of good points