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Notes -
China is about 60x more populous than Australia, they have nuclear weapons and the allies we rely on for security are all even further from us than China is. A little hysteria is not unreasonable.
Sure, a limited US defeat wouldn't be so bad. But a resounding defeat for the US, as you said, (or a rather big win for China as I said) would cause significant political changes in the US. Are we talking coups, civil war, prolonged insurrections, a decade of disaster like Russia's 1990s? I guess the big question is how decisive this war is and how resilient the US is.
Is it tenable to keep nukes in South Korea if Korea is effectively cut off from the US? The Soviets didn't manage to keep nukes in Cuba.
Furthermore, China is and should be concerned about Australia. Australia is where the iron ore is, where the coal is, where a non-trivial amount of surplus food production is.
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