Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
I see nothing in the context of the thread to suggest a situation that's "between China and the US".

China seems to me far more likely to collapse under the weight of internal issues than the US: their internal issues dwarf ours.
Objectively this is true.

But putting countries into boxes labeled BLUFOR and OPFOR is far simpler and more emotionally gratifying, even if it obfuscates the reality of the situation.

Aside from that, we love to be the scrappy underdog. It's individual psychological payoffs that lead people to think about US-Chinese relations in these distorted terms. That kind of calculus can be maddeningly difficult, and sometimes impossible, to alter.