Caitlin Talmadge is an associate professor of security studies at the Walsh School of Foreign Affairs and, according to her, the chance of the US and China going to war have drastically increased.
She said: “The odds of such a confrontation going nuclear are higher than most policymakers and analysts think.
“A war between the two countries remains unlikely, but no longer seems as implausible as it once did.”
According to the Georgetown professor, the majority of analysts that look at the US and China have dismissed the possibility of there being a nuclear conflict.
However, while looking at the war tactics used by the Pentagon in the most recent conflicts, she noted the US’s usual strategy involves going “deep into enemy territory in order to rapidly knock out the opponent’s key military assets at minimal cost.”
Professor Talmadge said: “The Pentagon developed this formula in wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Serbia, none of which was a nuclear power.”
China has its nuclear and conventional weapons close together and that could lead to the US attempting to target China’s nuclear weapons early on.
This could mean China would use these weapons before they would be destroyed by the US.
Professor Talmadge listed several potential scenarios that could lead to armed conflict between the two countries.
The first would be if China tried to invade Taiwan, with the other possibly arising due to territorial disputes in the south China Sea, an area that China claims as its own despite much of the world viewing it as international waters.
Naval patrols in the sea have only helped to escalate tensions.
The professor insists while the scenarios mentioned are unlikely, they have increased in possibility due to the increasing tensions.
She said: “This sobering reality should encourage leaders on both sides to find ways of resolving political, economic and military disputes without resorting to a war that could rapidly turn catastrophic for the region and the world.”
The warning comes as President Donald Trump has claimed China is looking to interfere in US elections despite many analysts arguing they are more interested in expanding their global dominance and there is little evidence to prove that China is looking to interfere in the upcoming elections.
Still, many experts agree China is trying to interfere in the US in other ways.
Chief technology officer of US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Dmitri Alperovitch said Chinese hackers had become the biggest threat to the US and Western Europe.
FBI Director Christopher Wray has also said: “I would tell you that China in many ways represents the broadest, most complicated, most long-term counterintelligence threat we face.”
Deputy assistant director of the CIA’s East Asia Mission Centre Michael Collins described the current situation between the US and China as “fundamentally a cold war”.