American 9-dash line is like controling all the Pacific)) They are everywhere, on every little rock
Chinese playing in the South China Sea are like kids swimming in the 1 meter kindergarden pool compared to American behemoth
and you talk about West falling, they are not falling, the West can and will exist as existential force for centuries and centuries even if they suddenly have IQ drop of 30 points. At some point, the monkey can become so powerfull and lethal, it doesn't even need brain, because it simply can kill more smarter monkeys who are not so big and who are less lethal.
it occured to me when i looked at how sustainable was North Korea. Despite all sanctions, famines and shortages - they didn't collapse. So i started questioning, what if there is some resiliency metric. Meaning, that some countries simply can't collapse even faced with gigantic problems, what if they can continue to exist and coexist with the problems? Then i thought - what if USA could be like North Korea, what if they could have negative economic growth, famines, world isolation, but still continue to exist as a millitary or oligarchic state with tremendous reach, never collapsing, despite collapse of the level of life, famines and shrinking economy? THis is trully horrific, but many Western countries could exist in this way, there is no magical collapse that can catch up to them. Unless defeated on the battlefield and scattered by the nuclear bombs, unless decapitated and unless their political elites are destroyed, unless their critical infrastructure of capitatal cities and intelligence and millitary remains - they will continue to be the TOP DOG on this planet. Asia with its divides, autism and slow crawl, can never catch up.