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Once fighting began, there would be little chance of avoiding a major war, because the stakes for both sides are very high, and both have large forces ready for battle. But a war with China would be nothing like those. That is a big responsibility even for the relatively small wars which Australia has joined in recent decades in Iraq and Afghanistan. A nation's leaders must decide whether those exceptional costs and risks are justified by the objectives for which the war is fought. Any choice to go to war carries special weight, because the costs and risks that must be weighed against the potential benefits are qualitatively different from those involved in other policy choices. If war comes, Australians would face a truly momentous choice. In fact, the risk of war is probably higher than the government realises, because China is harder to deter than they understand. Our armed forces are now being designed primarily to contribute to US-led operations in a major maritime war with China in the Western Pacific, with the aim of helping the United States to deter China from challenging the US, or helping to defeat it if deterrence fails. Many in Canberra take it for granted that we would do so, and defence policy has shifted accordingly. There can be no doubt that if war comes, Washington would expect Australia to fight alongside it. Neither Washington nor Beijing want war but both seem willing to accept it rather than abandon their primary objectives. Senior figures in the Morrison government quite explicitly acknowledged that the escalating strategic rivalry between the US and China could lead to war, and their Labor successors do not seem to disagree. Should Australia join the United States in a war against China to prevent China taking the US' place as the dominant power in East Asia? Until a few years ago the question would have seemed merely hypothetical, but not anymore.