What if the U.S. refused to pay its debt?

Forgive me for the stupid question.. PLEASE forgive me. I've never taken so much as a single economics class.

I have seen countless threads veer off into some China vs. United States debate where people argue that China is waging an "economic" war against the U.S. Usually it works out that people believe the U.S. has superior weapons and force projection, giving it the upper hand militarily. But many people believe that China would win the war by simply using our debt against us and bankrupting us.

Now my question is this... If we went to war with China, and they tried to collect on the debt we owe them, what's to stop us from nullifying that entire strategy by refusing to pay the debt back? After all, in wartime they would be our enemies. If we freeze our enemies' bank accounts in the war on terror, why couldn't we do the same with any debt we owe China?

People also talk about China taking our manufacturing jobs. They argue that China makes everything for us, so all they would have to do is stop exporting to the U.S. to hit us economically. If we were at war with them, wouldn't we ban imports from them anyways? Wouldn't we attempt to place a blockade on them, and start importing our goods from other countries like India or Japan?

It seems that economic warfare is a double-edged sword. If they demand we repay our debt to them, we could refuse to pay it - turning their billions of dollars of investment in our economy into empty, worthless words. If they can replace us as purchasers, we could replace them as suppliers... couldn't we?

What debt? To the IMF? The IMF owns US CORP.

Perhaps consider it in a different perspective or context, what if the world refused to buy up US debt. Sub-prime, prime, autos, credit cards... house of cards built on dead Presidents. We went Euro two years ago and divested any US interests last summer. The US financials can't cover the spread much longer. $100 oil. Tippy-canoe and Tyler too.

It's not pleasant to think what might happen when SE Asia loses patience with US... Arab pockets are only so deep eh. Might be an idea to stop payin' that public debt sooner rather than later... how much? $9,293,532,291,096.68. Some say personal and corporate debt is somewhat larger. Wink. $161,287.00 per ma/woman/child by some counts. Yup, debt... that's a losing game unless the game ends before...

Vic