Hacker News Reader

If we could deal with Japan and Germany, why not China?

America "dealt with" Japan and Germany by being a few months ahead in the nuclear arms race. That specific asymmetry was what ended WWII. America doesn't have anything like that advantage over China.

View on HN

To be fair, we dealt with Germany through conventional warfare, but that "we" included the Soviet Union, and required millions of deaths on both sides.

America dealt with Germany in a conventional manner, and could have done so to Japan in a conventional manner. At the time America decided it would be expedient to use a brand new destructive device that the world has more or less collectively decided not to use in a first-strike capacity.

The intent in asking the question is why does the preceding commenter feel a war with China would look like an Afghanistan as opposed to a Germany?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com