South America isn't invading you any time soon and every other mob has a whopping great pile of water to cross and not much in the way of an active carrier fleet to support it, or they're already your allies.
The only one that falls into your threat category is Russia. Is Russia really about to invade the US at the first sign of air supremacy weakness? You still have enough nukes to cause literal worldwide armageddon 20 times over.
It's not about invading the US. It is about challenging their regional dominance. If the US isn't willing or able to commit to defending Japan, Taiwan or Philippines, then Mainland China will be happy to recreate a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere under CCP leadership and to claim the Pacific and Indian Ocean for itself.
While that wouldn't hurt the average American in the short run, the long-term consequences of it in geopolitical terms would be extreme.
considering how much evil was done by US in last 15 years worldwide and how many millions of innocents died/suffer daily just because of lust for money and power, i am perfectly happy with Chinese taking banner of world supreme power for next few decades. side-by-side comparison of last 20-30 years leaves US in shame. I have more trust in Chinese party leaders rather than joke US presidency had become, with all those shady machinations behind the scenes. No, it ain't great either, but definitely lesser of an evil and US is spiraling down faster than ever.
and it was once a beacon of democracy and free world...
also, US has no greater claim to be the ruler of pacific region compared to China. in fact, if you look at the map, opposite is true.
Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.
No country's ever been a beacon of democracy and freedom, that's just propaganda. You will not get a world where unconstrained powerful nations do not act amorally. A better hope is that multilateral organizations like the UN and World Court gain more strength and legitimacy.
Chinese are much worse than the Americans, though born of the same cloth of Capitalism. Americans ideally rally under freedom, which means they will come fuck you up and then supply enough aid to keep you going and help you rebuild, I mean it's in their corporate interest to do so. Chinese rally under domination, that's their underlying ideology. If they ever start fucking people up, they will probably replace them with more Han Chinese. They are not just in it for the money, they are in it to take over the entire area. See Western Xinjiang province or Tibet.
The problem is, starting military development when a credible threat emerges is far too late. This stuff takes years in the pipeline. If you want it to be ready when you need it, you need to be working on it when you don't need it. (And run the risk of never needing it, and discovered that you wasted years and years of development.)
I agree with you completely, but the US gets a lot of economic muscle from it's force projection. That's one of the hilarious things about Trump's isolationism - if the US pulls back it's military envelope, it'll stop getting all those sweetheart trade deals from other countries. The US itself is safe, but it needs effective force projection.
The US might be tired of playing 'world cop', but it's a role it chose itself, and it's been getting plenty of tasty kickbacks for doing so. I don't have a problem with that - nations have a right to think of themselves first in any deal - but it's still funny that so many people ignore that US military projection heavily protects it's economic muscle.
The sheer number of people Russia lost in WWII is staggering. If I recall correctly the number was around 25 Million. Russia deserves so much credit for the defeat of hitler, but you won't hear it in America very often.
The only one that falls into your threat category is Russia. Is Russia really about to invade the US at the first sign of air supremacy weakness? You still have enough nukes to cause literal worldwide armageddon 20 times over.