The US vs China (war game debate)

I accept this rather novel challenge from DeFool.ScenarioI am taking the US side.First and foremost, we are ALREADY AT WAR. Total war is already ongoing. Regardless of the cause of this war, the solution to this problem is to end the war as quickly as possible, at terms that are most advantageous to the US.Second, my opponent continually raises a point about some sort of Snowden leak of some sort of "controversial" plan to use nuclear weapons. This is a non-starter for several reasons:1) You don't build nuclear weapons with global reach unless you intend to use them. 2) Plans for nuclear warfare are not exactly state secrets - the locations of silos and the executable elements of the plan are extremely closely guarded secrets, but the overall strategic elements of nuclear warfare are well known and not closely guarded state secrets.On RealismMy opponent wants to make this scenario as realistic as possible, but I must caveat that this scenario is EXTREMELY UNREALISTIC for several reasons:1) Warfare between nuclear powers is unprecedented - it has never occurred before. Therefore, to assume a raging war between two nuclear powers is already the very height of fantasy.2) We are not considering allied interaction. In reality, China would very heavily lean on its regional trade relationships, and its strategic relationship with Russia. The US would very heavily lean on its strategic relationships with regional players like Japan and Korea. We are not considering such relationships in this scenario, which adds a further element of fantasy to this scenario.Action Given the above summary, the action the US would take is exceptionally clear and unequivocal.We are talking about nuclear war here. There is no escaping this reality - this is TOTAL WAR between two nuclear powers, both with arsenals that can cause existential harm to the other party if launched in a first-strike capacity.Out of these two players, only one of them has an actual deterrent that would survive a first strike. This player is the US.GIVEN NO ALLIES, this game is over before it starts. The US would launch a MASSIVE PRE-EMPTIVE NUCLEAR STRIKE with the intention of destroying China's capacity to wage war. The US remains largely intact. Game over. Challenge met.This is no contest. I don't understand why this is difficult for DeFool to accept. What prevents nuclear warfare is a nuclear deterrent, and China's known nuclear capacity of 200-500 warheads is simply not enough to match the US arsenal in any capacity. In a pre-emptive nuclear strike, the US could not only obliterate every living person in the country, they could also destroy nuclear silos pre-launch, thus neutralizing the Chinese deterrent. This course of action does not require some sort of moral justification or Congressional approval - DeFool's scenario already assumes TOTAL WAR, and this is how TOTAL WAR is fought. If the US does not strike first, China would strike first, and that would be unacceptable to US strategic interests. China's first strike capability is enough to depopulate most of the continental United States, although it is not enough to disable a retaliatory nuclear strike from the US against China. As DeFool has made it clear, "there are no diplomatic, economic or cultural opportunities to avoid full scale war." This is the only way given the constraints inherent in this scenario.In the real world, what prevents this state of affairs is alliances that would result in sizable retaliation, i.e. a Russia/China alliance that would result in MAD (mutually assured destruction) in the event of a pre-emptive US nuclear strike. This has ALWAYS been the PRIME CONSIDERATION throughout the Cold War, which is why the US has always been reticent about escalating conflicts like Korea and Vietnam. DeFool is proposing that such 3rd party international considerations NOT APPLY to this war-game scenario, and without such considerations, the US would nuke first and nuke hard. This was MacArthur's strategy in the Korean war, and the only thing that prevented Truman from acceding to it was the reality of a nuclear-armed USSR backing China and North Korea (http://hnn.us...), (http://history.state.gov...). Such limitations do not apply to this war-game scenario.Bottom line, given the limits of this scenario, the US has every reason to launch a MASSIVE, PRE-EMPTIVE NUCLEAR STRIKE against any opponent unable to respond in kind, and this includes China. It maximizes opposing casualties, while minimizing US casualties. It is the optimal solution to TOTAL WAR.