I'd go as far to say that even a credible threat of war against the USA would have a substantial negative impact on our economy and by extension our quality of life; practically all of us would be impacted. People who don't see that are missing how much the OVERWHELMING majority of Americans have benefitted from USA hegemony over the past several decades.
1. This is going away one way or another.
2. My focus was deliberately very generalized to focus on the way the US benefits itself by pushing others down on a global level. We could drill down on a country by country basis and find ways in which the US can benefit the country and ways in which it benefits at the expense of said country. If you take the entire world population as a whole you can make the argument that it is a net negative and that maybe a stable multi-polar world might have different results. I don't follow Indian geopolitics as closely as others but sure the US Navy's efforts to patrol the oceans to benefit their main trading partners in Europe and Asia also helps to benefit countries such as India and Pakistan by helping secure trade but also secure a stable source of fuel and food (which is starting to slowly break down now) while at the same time, their clear efforts in deposing democratically elected Imran Kahn because he started to shift away from the US is a net negative to Pakistan's future.
Think of it another way, the US is only 5% of the global population. That means that 5% is benefiting at the expense of the other 95% due to this hegemon and the other 95% is trying to chip away at this and seems to be failing (as far as we can see but there is so much BS on both sides who really knows)
But wait, of that 5% we can clearly see many negative indicators among at least half (if not more) of the population.
If you are not in tech or part of the asset owning class then your wages have been flat or in decline. With the ever increasing amount of inflation in most goods, your lifestyle has been in decline.
So really only a subset of that 5% has been the beneficiary of the hegemon. Does that look like a thing to be proud of? A small in-group of people have got it going while everyone else is trending negative either now or going in that direction in the future.
It begs asking the same question I mentioned in my original post: Who are we really fighting for? The answer to this question really depends on if you have empathy for others or if you just care about yourself or your "tribe".
>practically all of us would be impacted.
To be fair, I did also point out that I hope that people in this bucket at least receive some crumbs from the top. Thats all we could hope for. But if you continue on that thought process, if the hegemon dies at least there would be some justice if it took out the top with everyone else.