politics

I don't think the Hegemony is as secure as it seems. Did you see how that "Operation Prosperity Guardian" thing went? From my perspective, the US has continually been losing face on the international stage for a while now. While I highly doubt that convicting the US and Israel of genocide will have much of an enforceable outcome, they are both deeply reliant on global trade which is very easy to disrupt (see Yemen vs. Israel rn). Internally Empire faces widespread dissatisfaction, economic struggles for the lower class, dwindling military recruitment, and is pretty much entirely reliant on "developing countries, including China" for manufacturing. They are clearly trying to posture as if all this is business as usual, but I'm not sure everyone is convinced.

That said, I could be way off and this is just wishful thinking.

Japan recently received a huge sum of money to buy western weapons. Like overnight became the largest army in terms of military budget in the region.