The alternative is trying to fight that, and if you're picking a fight with the strongest player, you're playing to lose.
Now it's threatening to invade NATO allies, and other allies are deploying troops to deter that; Which makes perfect sense because you cannot appease authoritarians.
The US is in fairly rapid, self inflicted, decline at this point.
My sense is this is an inflection point, and it may take decades to play out. At that point, the world will have irreversibly changed.
This is what an empire, that is competently run, should do. The US is not an empire, and it is not competently run. It has no attributes in common with empires of history. It does not occupy foreign lands, it does not extract taxes, it does not (directly) control foreign governments. If anything, in this case, the US is under the control of a foreign government.
> Meanwhile, the so-called vassal states of the US
I haven't seen that expression at all, ever. No one was called those state vasal states a year ago. And now, as fascists are in American government, it is becoming routine amount right wing. The logic seems to be that any former ally that does not start war with USA is a vassal or something.
> haven't bothered to deploy nuclear weapons because we have no use for them.
French recently announced change of doctrine, they will expand nuclear arsenal.