Part 3/7:
The most immediate flashpoint is Taiwan, which Ferguson sees as the potential trigger for a direct military confrontation between the U.S. and China. He notes that while the U.S. has long accepted the fiction that Taiwan is part of China, recent years have seen a hardening of American resolve to defend the island's de facto independence.
The stakes are enormous - as Ferguson puts it, "losing or not even fighting for Taiwan would be seen all over Asia as the end of American predominance in the region. It would surely cause a run on the dollar and US Treasuries. It would be an American Suez."