Washington 16 Aug (ANA)  - War between the USA and China would be "ruinous for both counties" and could bring down the global economy, a report for the US army warns. The stark assessment of the implications of a conflict between the two military powers suggests fighting could break out if existing regional disputes are not sensitively handled. Astonishingly the research paper says both militaries are planning for a future conflict but gives different assessments on the outcomes. If a dispute were to boil over today, the US would win with relatively few casualties, experts found. However, a war in 10 years time would result in the US paying a far higher price. President Barack Obama's former chief intelligence adviser David Gompert laid out the chilling scenarios for world war and peace in a report for Rand Corporation. He said the US would outgun China today but the east Asian nation was rapidly closing the gap economically and militarily. Mr Gompert said: "If hostilities erupted, both have ample forces, technology, industrial might, and personnel to fight across vast expanses of land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace." By 2025, China would be much better equipped to respond to a conflict with the US, Mr Gompert said, but "even then China could not be confident of gaining military advantage, which suggests the possibility of a prolonged and destructive, yet inconclusive, war". In the new report, War With China, Thinking Through the Unthinkable, he warns: "Premeditated war between the United States and China is very unlikely, but the danger that a mishandled crisis could trigger hostilities cannot be ignored. "While neither state wants war, both states' militaries have plans to fight one." "Chinese losses could be much heavier than US losses" if a war was triggered today, the paper says. Damage to China's economy would be far greater than the impact on the US, it concludes. The report's author explains: "Because much of the Western Pacific would become a war zone, China's trade with the region and the rest of the world would decline substantially." Chinese military strategy is making it "increasingly difficult for the United States to gain military-operational dominance and victory, even in a long war", it continues. Japan's increased military activity in the region could have a considerable influence on military operations and a long conflict could expose China to internal political divisions, the paper adds.(ANA)

FA/ANA/16 August 2016-------