U.S.-China relations are eroding. Beijing has severely criticized the Obama administration’s upcoming arms deal with Taiwan, and is demanding that President Obama cancel his planned meeting with the Dalai Lama.

In the wake of recent disputes over climate change, currency manipulation, human rights, Internet surveillance and trade, these criticisms contribute to an increasing trend of defiance from China toward the United States. But pundits from the West maintain that Beijing and Washington are too economically entwined for China to pull free from the U.S.

The latest evidence of the rising tensions came on Monday when high-ranking Chinese military officers proposed that their country dump some U.S. bonds to punish Washington for its planned $6.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan.

People’s Liberation Army (pla) major generals Luo Yuan and Zhu Chenghu and Senior Col. Ke Chunqiao put forth the idea in interviews published in Monday’s issue of Outlook Weekly. “Our retaliation,” said Luo in his interview, “should not be restricted to merely military matters, and we should adopt a strategic package of counter-punches covering politics, military affairs, diplomacy and economics to treat both the symptoms and root cause of this disease.”

“For example,” Luo continued, “we could sanction them using economic means, such as dumping some U.S. government bonds.”

Though they don’t represent official government policy, the pla officers’ demands for retaliation exemplify the domestic pressures on China to make good on its threats to punish Washington over the weapon sales to Taiwan.

Officially, China has announced plans to sanction U.S. companies that sell weapons to the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which Beijing considers a breakaway province of China.

The Outlook Weekly interviews were published just days after China’s Commerce Ministry accused the U.S. of dumping chicken on the Chinese market, and announced plans to levy substantial duties on U.S. chicken products. The heavy import duties—of as much as 105.4 percent—will injure one of the few U.S. industries that profitably exports to China.

Despite China’s claims that the U.S. illegally sells chicken wings and feet for prices below the cost of production, the case is political. These anti-dumping duties on chicken will be at least as harmful for Chinese consumers as they are for U.S. exporters. So what was Beijing’s true motivation?

The tensions stem from arguments over the value of the Chinese currency, the yuan. Washington claims the yuan is kept artificially low, which gives Chinese firms an advantage on international markets. China has ignored the calls to revalue its currency, and Beijing’s latest move against U.S. chicken sidelines China’s earlier promises to avoid protectionism.

Many Western observers say that the economies of the two countries are too entwined for China to pull free from the U.S. On February 4, Time wrote that “[w]hile Washington and Beijing seem very much at odds just now … their relationship is truly one thing too big to fail.”

Zachary Karabell, author of Superfusion: How China and America Became One Economy and Why the World’s Prosperity Depends on It, wrote on Monday that “The fact remains that as much as China may want to go it alone, it cannot.”

With holdings of almost $800 billion in U.S. treasuries, China is Washington’s biggest creditor. These pundits can’t imagine a scenario in which China would take the illogical step of causing economic harm to itself, so they believe the relationship between Beijing and Washington cannot fail.

But they are not factoring human nature into their analysis. Human nature can be illogical. The nature of conflict and war often defies basic logic. A nation knowingly inflicts harm on itself as a necessary byproduct of injuring its enemy.

These optimistic analysts base their speculation on the premise that humans are logically minded. They believe China’s leaders value national self-preservation over undermining America’s global power and influence. But 6,000 years of men spilling each other’s blood proves that this is not always so. Nations routinely place their own well-being at risk and endure suffering if it is required to inflict harm on their enemies.

Consider this example: During the throes of America’s financial meltdown, Russian officials approached their Chinese counterparts suggesting that the two countries dump Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac holdings as a calculated blow against Wall Street. The Chinese refused, but the instance exemplifies the way nations will work behind the scenes to take deliberate steps to wound their rivals, and that they will do so at the expense of incurring harm. A complete collapse of the U.S. economy would have been a serious blow to the Russian economy in the short term, but Moscow was willing to suffer in order to undermine the U.S.

In the global competition for power, what is logical on the national level often appears illogical on the individual level. In the ongoing struggle for power, the notion that logic and self-preservation will prevent China from dumping U.S. foreign reserve holdings is not guaranteed by any means. China’s bitterness over the U.S.’s hegemony runs deep. Beijing sees Washington as a sinking ship, and knows the U.S. will not be the source of its prosperity for much longer. China will pull free from the American economy, despite substantial short-term damage to its own. While the U.S. and China will not come to a full-scale military altercation, China will be complicit to the economic collapse of the U.S.

The reason war and conflict have plagued mankind since our history began is that humans have rejected God and lived according to their own faulty human reasoning.

For decades, world leaders regarded Herbert Armstrong as an authority on the subject of geopolitics, labeling him an “unofficial ambassador for world peace.” On the cause of conflict and war, Mr. Armstrong wrote: “Nations never needed to go to war. Yielding to human nature is the cause of war. Rebellion against God’s law of peace is the cause of war.” What a profound truth! Conflict and violence are caused by humans rejecting God’s law and promoting themselves above all else.

To understand the future of the relationship between China and the U.S., read Russia and China in Prophecy.