Reply To: Simple Solution

You make some valid (and not as valid) points.
Look at history in Asia. There was China, Japan, Russia and the US. There was a balance of power because no one wanted to risk a war weakening themselves to another power. China became a non-power and Japan beat Russia. That left only Japan and the US. The other issue is strategic depth. The US was in the Philippines only a few hundred miles from Tokyo while Japan was thousands of miles from Washington DC. Understandably, Japan didn’t like that. That is why Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. To get the US out of the Pacific. They mistakenly believed America would just walk away and let them have it.
It’s similar to what’s going on here Russia is not OK with NATO in Ukraine being a few hundred miles from Moscow while Russia is well over a thousand miles from (forget Washington) London, Paris, and Berlin.