China's Emergence as a Superpower (till 2014)

[Dayuhan]

My point was made when I stated that the opportunity to counter any potential future military threat against US interests from the Russia (then the Soviets) and China passed in the the 50's. A limited war against either power will not be possible as neither will be the widespread use of nukes.

I sense another bout of historical revisionism coming on... what exactly was the US supposed to do in the 1950s to "counter any potential future military threat" from Russia and China? Nuke them? How and why does one go about countering potential future threats? Are we to try to preemptively counter any threat that might possibly someday exist?

It is therefore better for the US to accept that it will need to give ground to either power in a slow and controlled manner in the forlorn hope that internal developments within those powers will reduce their need for aggressive expansionism over time.

So far the US hasn't given any ground at all. The Russians certainly did: they lost an immense amount of ground with the fall of the Soviet Union. Of course that ground wasn't gained by the US, it was gained by the people who live on it, which is as it should be.

Neither Russia nor China can reasonably called "aggressively expansionist", and the US isn't "losing ground" to anyone. We're adjusting to a more multipolar world with greater economic balance, but that's inevitable and needn't be something to fear.

There is simply no point in deluding oneself that one (the US) can counter and if necessary defeat either power if push comes to shove.

Neither can either "counter and if necessary defeat" the US if push comes to shove. There's a very strong incentive not to let push come to shove, as there was during the cold war... and that's not necessarily a bad thing. If any of these powers had the capacity to conclusively defeat any other, they'd be tempted to use that capacity. The less of that the better.