Nice post. It's a horrible situation, but has been in the works since Cheney's Defense Planning Guidance of 1992. That was when the US shifted from a threat-based defense policy to one capabilities-based. The stated intention at the time was to preclude any possible challenge to US hegemony/global dominance which had been achieved with the end of the Cold War.

That this was strategically incoherent (no country could commit the necessary resources to ensure permanent dominance over any possible competitor) did not seem to matter. There was also the notion that the US could only defeat itself by allowing US public opinion to force the government to throw in the towel (the "lesson of Vietnam") which explains the current obsession with domestic information operations, or simply "keep them cheering and keep them stupid" . . .

A clash is inevitable. One can only hope that the vassal countries revolt before it actually comes to a shooting war with Russia and others . . .