I believe America cannot win as it has a civic society that must adhere to the value of respecting lives," Ishihara said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that was primarily focused on China.

Basically, he's 1 for 2. As long as the US respects lives, fears casualties and promotes retreat, China could beat us in much the same way as we lost Vietnam. As for the US being incompetent, that's the old longstanding Japanese racism raising its head. They look at the demographics of the military and make broad assumptions from there.

But in a fight to the death the US would pull out all the stops with tactical nuclear weapons that would quickly cut off the head of the Chinese dragon. I have no doubt that we also have the capacity to remove the population advantage in short order as well.

These are the sort of scenarios RAND and now many others have been toying with for years. Responses to everything from the sinking of a US ship near Taiwan to a full scale nuclear attack on the US mainland.

Special weapons have been produced for special circumstances. Let's hope we never have to use them.