Example from https://www.defensenews.com/congress/budget/2022/11/15/white...
> The $21.7 billion in Pentagon funding is “for equipment for Ukraine, replenishment of Department of Defense stocks and for continued military, intelligence and other defense support,” according to a summary table accompanying the supplemental request.
And anyway, if the USA wants to keep benefitting from their empire they have to pay the costs to maintain and expand it. No more money, the empire shrinks and other countries take what's American now.
What would that be?
The USA de facto surrenders to Russia in the Ukraine war and Europe starts to buy gas from Russia again (if the USA can't protect us we have to buy protection somewhere else). Russia use European money to start buying European politicians again. Eventually they'll politically control all of Europe. Maybe not the UK.
China gets East Asia because a retreating USA must be seen with suspect there too.
The USA maybe keeps the Americas, which however are not very happy with them even now (the countries that don't speak English.) Some countries will try to jump ship to Russia and China. More colonial wars to follow.
Overall effect: reduced reach for American companies, products and services. A small side effect: we won't be here to discuss this on HN but on a site of another country/language. Eventually: switch to a different worldwide common language (France experienced that demotion around the 60s/70s - French was the previous lingua franca) and further reduction of reach. Eventually: a poorer USA.
Seen from outside the USA this doesn't look MAGA to me. The opposite of it. Hard to assess the impact on inequality, healthcare, tuition, etc. Maybe the USA will go the way of the European Nordic countries or they'll implode. I won't get into that.
Note that Wikipedia's statistics have China comprising just over 90% of the population of East Asia. In what possible world would China not be in control?
By analogy to the Manchus, you'd need an invasion from Japan or, I guess, Korea, that was supported by the PLA.
Military bases and alliances aren't a perfect proxy for political influence, but they're a pretty good one.
Russia's propaganda machine was caught off guard because Putin grievously miscalculated in ability to take over Ukraine, and kept the invasion so secret that there was barely any propaganda. But the propaganda campaign is kicking up again, and you can see it in some of the ghost comments on HN, even.
There are also folks caught up in pro-fascist organisations simply because they want to express their general anger at the world for not living up to their expectations.
Also, everything the media tells you is a lie to get everyone on one side.