“Asia” being effectively just two countries: Japan and South Korea; neither of which is particularly important to the United States
That's one hell of a sale you're running there. Take Taiwan, get Korea and Japan free? We were just trying get back what's ours not rob the whole hood clean. I know that the US is gonna give up on Taiwan long before China but I didn't expect it to give up Japan and Korea too without so much as a threat from China towards them. I really hope you can become America's top negotiator. I'd bribe anyone with my own money to get you the job.
Which countries are this “world”?
Look up the UN. All of them. The most difficult ones are going to be the Western Euros, Canada, Australia and that's already a minority of the countries out there. The rest are most clear-headed and can see China's rise but even the difficult ones aren't totally mindless. They can see it too but are just hoping that what they see isn't true. When it becomes more obvious, they will all see China's rise and America's relative wane, in the order of their intelligence of course.
Europe and FVEY will stick with the U.S. until the end of all time and developing world countries deal based in transactions of coercion and inducement. And even if America’s will in Asia can’t be effectuated -> so what?
Declining powers lose their grip piece by piece. Asia is the hardest to maintain, and the US loses it to China, Europe will see the first large piece of that puzzle come into place. Previous to this, America and the West have already lost small pieces in the global south to Chinese influence. Asia would just be the most visible. Then, China, having secured its surroundings, will have less to worry about and more resources to develop, making its rise and the relative fall of the US, even faster. Europe is an American stronghold but so are Japan and Korea. With China rising further, and Russia in its alignment, they will jump ship to the new Chinese world order. There's no difference between developed countries and developing countries in how they decide allegience. It's not about whom they follow; it's about never sinking with the ship.
See above. The stakes aren’t high for the U.S. since the 3 biggest reasons cited for Taiwan: “credibility”, “Asia” and “democracy” are fairly analytically vaucous
The stakes are measured against the risks and I agree with you 100% that China is raising the stakes far too high for the US to engage in war. The US would rather lose its credibility and accelerate its decline than lose its life. And China's working hard everyday to make that calculation and decision an ever simpler one.
The part where I don't agree is that you seem to think that Americans will be happily eating popcorn as they watch this unfold and they watch their empire unravel. No, there will be no popcorn; there will be only horrid porcine squeals from the likes of Pompeo, Pelosi, Rubio, Cotton, Cruz, etc... American TV will sound like a Smithfield slaughterhouse the day after a disgruntled worker swapped out all the machine blades with rusted keys overnight.
