And in cold statistics, a few hundred thousand killed (or even a few million of a nation the size of China) does NOT constitute genocide.

What
would constitute 'genocide' then in your book? If not
a few hundred thousand?
Genocide is the "deliberate" attempt to destroy an entire race or distinct group of people.
The deaths of less than 1% of a national population wouldn't qualify even if it was a deliberate act.
And the U.S. never sets out to deliberately kill large numbers of noncombatants.
You're advocating using Nuclear weapons against the Chinese and killing perhaps millions of its population I can't really see how this would not be called "Genocide"
The use of Nukes is not something which should be taken likely. The United States kind of got away with such a horrendous act since the bombs in WW2 may have saved American and Japanese lives with a quick Japan surrender. Plus people gave us the benefit of doubt since Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were the initial aggressors bombing Pearl, trying to turn Asia into a slave colony with Bataan Death March and Hitler's exterminator of Jews. Nukes have only ever been used twice in warfare and both those times were by the United States of America upon a civilian population of Japanese, it is not something the world would accept lightly again.
let's still play out your little war game scenario for a while
You Dayton3 say we should preemptive China because A: You don't like them and B:They might someday threaten the USA's sphere of influence. Your now Mr.Commander in Chief and you've admitted the US army and US Marines have become financially fucked and you've no plans to get into a ground war with millions of Chinese. To limit casualties you want to only hit them using our superior Air and Naval forces.
Let's ignore for a second the United States could barely afford another war,
let us also ignore Lockheed's overpriced F22 faults (soooo damn expensive the USAF can barely afford it) and pretend the F22 wasn't shot down by an F18 hornet during a USN exercise or USAF/Lockheed in a second exercise had another of its most expensive stealth toys blasted out of the sky by an F-15.
In order to swing the scales in our favor let's also imagine our Star Wars Missile Shield isn't a heap of BS scoring success only 50% of the time in ideal staged tests. but lets instead say this Star Wars shield is the best thing since sliced bread and scores 90% of the time and let's say the F22 Raptor and our F14s etc etc are almost invincible. Now let's forget China is an economic superpower with a highly sophisticated military. Let's make believe China doesn't have any kind of sophistication, let's pretend they haven't been carrying out joint ops with the Russians and pretend Chinese don't have a small satellite network or any kind of warning system. Let's forget it operates MIRVs, is now attempting to copy some of euro technology and has spies stealing some of our stealth fighter designs and let's pretend it doesn't use ASAT weapons. Let's under estimate our opponets and over estimate ourselves. China only uses old aircraft from the 60s and 70s like the Su-24 and Mig25 foxbat
it ships are not high tech but old and rusting
and China doesn't use MIRV missiles just old ICBMs from the 70s named the Feng-Ding-Dong-32 or whatever its called.
Let's give China 300 or so nukes which basically puts its number of nuclear weapons on par with Israel's secret WMD program.
Let's also imagine 50% of China's nuclear sites have a big
"Kick me please" sign or "Nuke missles are here" signs so it will be pretty ease to take many of them out at the same time. However also keep in mind that some we won't be able to take out, they could be mobile launchers hidden in sheds, buildings or even train cars
http://englishrussia.com/images/missile_train/8.jpg
and some of them might be under hundreds of feet of rock perhaps deep within the rock of the Himalayans...but none of these matters so far because we still decide to go kick some butt
We move the pieces in and got China surrounded by air and sea
Act 1
BAMB !
You send out the Carriers, the Frigates, the best fighter aircraft and stealth bombers the USAF has to offer.
Now in order to destroy the Chinese military you need to strike each and every China military target almost simultaneously.
You do that
"Yee Haw"
"Fuck Yeah"
but 11 USAF pilots are shot down by China's SAMs, their air defense systems etc. Overall the USAF kicks ass shooting down aircraft and bombing the heck out of Chinese sites. The Navy kicks ass also bashing the heck out of Chinese bases and flexing its muscles across the skies of Chinese cities.
The US Navy with its assault ships, carriers and cruisers beats the heck out of China.
but here comes your first big hitch
four Su-24 and two Mig25's break through
USS Cowpens and the USS Kitty Hawk are hit. The Cowpens is first to sink, almost half the crew perish (over 150). It is the first major strike on ship since USS Cole, the first major loss of ship since USS Sarsi of the Korean war and the first major loss of over hundred of lives since WW2. Next to sink is the famous Aircraft Carrier the USS Kitty Hawk, almost 2000 crew are lost. 10 of its aircraft are saved but 79 aircraft are lost with this magnificent ship. Huge loss of life and the first loss of a U.S. Aircraft Carrier since WW2.
but despite these loses the United States still dominated the seas around China and beats China in the air.
You have now taken out 60% of China's nuclear sites. and 60 percent from 300 leaves us with only 120 to worry over
Act 2
Now comes the nasty part, China lies hurt, it cities are obliterated and its military is battered and its almost totally humiliated but its desperate and very angry
Hours later it after heavy bombardment from us and having most of its military destroyed plays it ACE it launches its ICBMs
It fires off the Feng-Ding-Dong-32 or whatever they are called.
120 missiles are fired at us in order to overwhelm our defences but now our great super dooper Star Wars shiled kicks in. This amazing shiled of ships, anti-missiles and death star satellites is so great it manages to shoot down 90% of those ICBMs thrown at us. WOO-HOOO !!
YOUUZZE DA FORCE LUKE
and here comes the ugly part :
90% of 120 leaves us with 12 strategic weapons getting through
1 strategic weapon is a nightmare holocaust
Back in World War 2 Hiroshima and Nagasaki were something close to a civilian holocaust as many as 200,000 people were dead within a few seconds or hours of the blasts. Within a few years as many as half a million could have died due to the ill effects of radiation. If we are ever dumb enough to hit China with nukes the bombs the Chinese will be firing back at us are going to be thousands of times more powerful than Fatman
Check out why nuclear war is not very cool
http://www.gensuikin.org/english/photo.html
Now comes the consequences of directly attacking a nuclear power with nuclear fire...12 nukes hit back
nuke1
First to be hit is one of our overseas bases
Okinawa one of the key US military sites in Japan's Okinawa Prefecture. The ICBM hits. In a flash of atomic fire, in one hundreth of a single second over six thousand US servicemen are vaporized (in one 100th of a second you now have received over double the number of US loses in Iraq and Afghanistan and lost a number almost equal to the American Revolutionary War) hundreds of abrams tanks and dozens of Apaches and F15 Eagles are destroyed in a flash of atomic fire. With the bases at Okinawa nuked the United States has now lost much of its ability to project its power overseas.
nuke2
arrives a few mins after and it hits Hawaii, thousands of US civilian casualities and US Naval base destoryed. Now the numbers start getting ugly you've got a death toll of 39,000 people this number is more than the entire Korean war and almost equal to the number of US troop deaths in the entire Vietnam war.
nuke3
One Chinese ICBM takes off from Manchuria or maybe it was the Gobi it flies down over the NorthPole through Canada and smacks into Detriot.
Lucky for us the warhead was a bit of a no show, a total dud, it fizzles out and never explodes. but the rest of the ICBMs do explode
nuke4, nuke5, nuke6 etc
Here's where the nuclear holocuast stats getting really disgusting as the Chinese ICBMs start raining in on the West coast scorching the cities, ICBMs landing the middle and even the bases or cities in east. Los Angeles, Washington DC, Minneapolis, NYC, Missouri all Nuked.
At the cities for these folk its just horror.
A giant white hot fireball grows inside the city in less than a hundreth of a second. This giant ball over a mile across is suddenly turning everything within a mile of ground zero into vapor. Everything is suddenly a white hot vapor
the cars, trees, people, bikes are all vaporized.
Over five miles from the center the effects are slower, the flash is less dangerous but within a few seconds the heat burns so hot and books, wallpaper, plastics, clothes, wood all spontaneously combust. Everything is suddenly consumed in a hellstorm of fire.
Five miles from the center everything is a burning hell and a few seconds later a huge blast wave comes and the shockwave levels buildings and rips apart steel just as you would tear tinfoil with your hands.
Ten miles out and people are getting killed by flying debris and dying from the effects of third degree burns.
The winds help spread the fallout from cities on the West to the East and spread contamination all across America. You are now talking about the deaths of millions of Americans. That's combined the death toll Americans in the U.S Civil War, WW1 and WW2 mutlipled many, many times. Houston is hit by an ICBM with a chemical warhead, this WMD is less destructive and the immediate death toll is far less than a nuke but it also helps spread the fear and panic and thousands of American mothers and fathers try to flee across into Mexico and Canada fearing another horrific nuclear or biological attack on US soil.
Why 2 Juggernaut trucks never played chicken - too much to loose and little to win.
You have defeated the Commie Chinese and bombed them back to the stoneage
but look at what you have gained:
A bleeding and broken America, the civilians suffering, the US military barely functional but basically crippled and the communication network breaking down totally.
Act 3
Basic services will break down, in a nuclear holocaust like this people will have no acess to food or medical supplies or water. Some high ranking US civilians might suddenly want to become warlord gangsters and take power of the United States in a bloody coup that's if the President and his cabinate haven't already been vaporized with DC. You're basically going to have a Katrina times twenty going on in multiple parts of the nation. Everything is suddenly broken and you've got wide spread looting, rioting and lawlessness.
but the worst ain't over yet
Remember Dayton3 your refusal at the start of your big invasion? Your refusal to send in Marines or US Army on the Chinese mainland and control the area?
back in China you have a nation bleeding in rubble and ruins with maybe a few million wiped out in HongKong and Beijing or is it half a billion dying or on their death beds....
Let's just keep ourselves concerned with Americans for now
With millions of their fellow Chinese countrymen wiped out you've now given thousands of Chinese reason to become terrorists and the next wave of KhmerRouge. Except this time its different you have a broken and unsecure Nuclear State and a bunch of angry Chinese militias and mobs and khmerrouge and maoist terrorists now have a lot of nuclear stuff on their side.
Or even worse the Taliban and al-qaeda in Afghanistan which now shares a border with a broken China now have their hands on fissionable material.
Worse still...
In this new bleeding and broken America, with the US civilians suffering from this nuclear holocaust...America has now become extremely fragile as it lies in the gutter.
If Cuba or Venezuela decide to attack a broken United States there will probably be only so much we can do. Cuba might attack Florida and thank us for that 50 yr embargo. If the Ruskies a nation with 10,500 nukes decides to kick us while we are down - then we are completely fucked