What would happen if America were attacked?

Your hypothesis is unlikely but just for fun, let's touch a few points: first of all, a sitting American president would never agree to reducing our country's military capabilities and projection. What you're saying is that our president suddenly goes rogue and decides to persuade our government to increase our enemies ability to be a greater threat to us by reducing our ability to deter them or incapacitate them. However, you can rest assure that any sitting president would rather set the entire world on nuclear fire than surrender our nation to our enemies. Nonetheless, if we are ever attacked, it will not be because we've reduced our capabilities to defend ourselves but because our enemies have increased their ability to wage war on us. A plausible scenario was played in the TV series Jericho where a couple of dozen nuclear bombs go off in 20+ of the major American cities. Upon such devastation, our country would immediately come to a halt and while our ability to retaliate against a declared enemy may not be impaired, if our government cannot immediately identify what nation or enemy group orchestrated this attack, we would be left guessing. If we round up the usual suspects and simply launch our nukes against them, then North Korea and Iran would be blasted off the map. Now your hypothesis comes into play: if other nations that don't necessarily sympathize with us realize that our nation has been devastated to the point where it could be easily crippled to the ground, then they could set off their nukes in attempt to completely wipe us off the map. Assuming that even after such severe devastation, our capacity to launch everything we got is still intact, our ICBMs would hit all the major cities of the world. A country like China or Russia, as much as they disagree with our policies and how we play the game, would never attack us just to see their own nations burst into flames as well. They would only rain fire on us in a win-all/lose-all scenario such as the mutually assured destruction war game currently in place. A Russian or Chinese invasion or multi-nation invasion against the U.S. is unlikely unless said nations were 100% sure our ability to launch our nukes was entirely impaired and the ability of our Air Force and Navy to reach their soil was impaired as well. As far as Canada and Mexico go, they are too close to U.S. to agree with other nations to devastate our country, they would lose greatly. In reality, the only way our nation could be seriously devastated would be a Jericho type scenario, where nukes are smuggled into our greatest cities and set off. Our nation's economy and infrastructure would be crippled beyond any immediate repair. Our government and military's capacity to operate under such duress is the only thing that could ensure our nation to prevail. However, the good old U.S. of A as we knew it would probably never exist again.

"In return we give them money, but we already owe them billions of dollars that is yet to be paid so what does China have to lose by attacking the US."

Well, they'd lose the billions of dollars they expect us to pay them.

Any attempt to launch a conventional, ground-taking attack on the continental United States would would set off indications & warnings analysts around the world months in advance. Retaliation would be swift, both from the geographic commands with responsibility over the attackers' homelands and the mutual defense alliances of which the US is a part. We also have the best battle-tested special operations forces, and there's an Air Force General in Nebraska with 5,000 nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them anywhere in the world. We've been concentrating on COIN and urban warfare for a while, but we can still destroy an army in the field, or a fleet at sea, like nobody's business.

Okay first off if we were to go to war with China, them invading us. We would be in for a hell ride. The Chinese military is huge because they have so many people in their country and for every one soldier we have, they have about five. It'd be a long and hard fought battle. I do believe America would prevail because they have better technology, its on our own land which we know better than the Chinese would and we would have forces ready to fight before the Chinese because we don't have to send them over seas, a direct insert is all thats needed.

As for other countries getting involved. Of course the British will be involved on our side of course and along with them come France and many other European countries. So we have more support than China would. But the Chinese have allies to, and not just allies but countries that hate America would be sure to take advantage. Were talking another world war I think.

Our boarder countries Mexico and Canada would most likely take our side. Canada may not like our policies and such but we are still allies and the Mexicans are afraid of the U.S. end of story they'd be forced to help us, or stay out.

How are "they" going to get here? No other country in the world besides the US has a Navy or Air Force capable of projecting or sustaining a large military force outside of a few hundred miles of their own borders.

And Obama doesn;t have that authority. That authority lies with the US Congress.

Last year China sent a Peacekeeping Battalion of 600 troops to Africa. After ONLY two months they had to reduce it to one Company (150 troops) because a battalion was a strain on their logistics system.

By way of comparison the US deployed 500,000 combat troops and all of their sh*t in a few short months and has logistically sustained them there for the last 8 years.

I'm right there with RedLeg 100%..

Angelique... are you even a part of the military? If you are, you should be ashamed. You have NO IDEA what it is like and the sacrifices we make to keep this country safe. Maybe YOU should go LIVE in China.. Whose side are you really on?

China starting a war with us just wouldn't happen and it is not a good idea for them and they know it, so you don't need to worry about that.

Plus, like RedLeg said, Obama doesn't have the power to just get rid of a big chunk of the military.

Well if we were attacked which we won't, We would find who killed fellow americans, but then if we did that everybody would whine about how we killed innocent people, but people forget that they killed about 10 times the amount of ouur innocent then we did theres. Just like right now how apparently its bush's fault for eveyhting thats happening thats bad.

Shut up with the Obama ****, give it a rest.

But anyway, if we were attacked there would be no way that any country could take a country the size of ours. Americans would not simply lie on there backs like the French. American civilians would fight.

America is already weak.... and if we were to be attacked by a country like China we would be SOL because first of all, they make mostly all of our stuff, so.... yeah. And their military does not play around!