  In earlier centuries kings and governments employed astrologists to help them
take the best decisions. Present-day governments no longer employ astrologists
but still have no clear analytical tool to replace them. Over the past two
decades we have developed a methodology for the scientific investigation of
recurrent historical events. It consists in two steps. (i) Identification and
comparison of historical episodes driven by a common mechanism. (ii) Under the
reasonable assumption that what has happened several times in the past is
likely to happen again, one then derives testable predictions. This of course
is nothing other than the protocol used in experimental science when exploring
new phenomena. We believe such a tool can give decision makers much better
insight. In the present paper we illustrate this analysis by considering
challenges, that span more than a century, to US hegemony in the Pacific. The
outcomes suggest that it is only through the sidelining of one of the
contenders that the confrontation will end. At the time of writing (late 2018)
early evidence of this confrontation is already visible at three levels. (i)
Growing US concerns for domestic security that are leading to a new form of
McCarthyism. (ii) Political instability due to China-US polarization in several
Asian countries as well as in the countries participating in the Belt and Road
Initiative. (iii) Tension and sanctions in procurement and trade.
