[esqqfskaw]

This seems more like an issue with people being out of touch with the theoretical side of war. War, as a concept, has been treated as simply being another means of compelling cooperation since as far back as Sun Tzu. Although western war philosophy has been equally influenced by more recent figures like Carl Von Clausewitz. The US military even acknowledges similar thinking through modern concepts like the DIME model that are oriented towards forming a theory of war that acknowledges itself as part of a larger political environment. From this perspective, where war is just a tool for compelling cooperation, a trade war is simply a trade and economy based conflict which seeks to compel cooperation towards some particular goal like not putting people in concentration camps or buying more USA made rice.

[lsc]

I... think that in the modern era, "real war" is a different sort of thing from "trade war" - a difference in kind, not degree, in a way that just wasn't so when Tzu wrote.

The fact of the matter is that both the US and China could survive (albeit with a lower standard of living) without external trade entirely. I don't think the same could be said for an all-out war.

An all-out war between the two countries would likely kill most of us and put the standard of living of the few survivors below what you and I would call 'civilization' - one side might lose harder than the other, sure, but the consequences would be essentially unthinkable for both.