I may have a bit of a rose-colored view of the US, or at least its potential to have its conscience pricked by the notion that tomorrow can be freer than today, but if we don’t care about that anymore, then whatever it was that made America a more palatable hegemon than the USSR or China is gone. The USA is just another transactional actor, and not even a particularly reliable one. At this point, Trump has literally threatened more individual souls with annexation than China has.