The Chinese and Russians pose zero threat to a Balkanized US. Neither is interested in global military empire, unlike the hopefully soon to be on the ash heap of history US.
A Balkanized US would have a half decade of growing pains as the territories sorted themselves out, and would ultimately reform into four to seven regional authorities. A decade or two after that, it would see slow reunification of some parts, but not all.
The key difference between a Balkanized Soviet Union and the US is uniformity of identity. Most Soviets saw themselves as “Russian” on some level, and Russian patriotism built on revisionist history was the order of its day. The US will have been fractured by identity politics, erasure and demonization of its origins, and hyphenated-Americans before its collapse, so few would have a loyalty to the classic “America,” that, in reality, didn’t survive even a century before Lincoln torched the whole thing to the ground anyway.
I think most people don't realize what a giant empire the US is. A third of the US would still be larger and more powerful than any country in Europe. Russia can't even finish taking over a backwoods nothing country like Ukraine. We are not getting "absorbed", this isn't 200 AD.
My only exception is that Russia is working on the Ukraine surgically. They could have steamrolled the whole territory, but have minded the optics.
A power vacuum caused by the dissolution of the US will definitely encourage a move to absorb territory. It already happened to Cuba when they separated from the US. USSR would still have influence there if they hadn't dissolved themselves. The lesson we learned with Cuba has inspired the US to maintain a diplomatic relationship that has prevented this from happening again. The dissolution of the largest superpower the world has ever known will cause unprecedented reactions. Nothing that happened in 200AD was remotely close to what's coming now.
The USSR already demonstrated the threat to Balkanization of the US via Cuba. They will do it again in the absence of a coordinated US pushback. There's too much economic gain to be had and Russia won't try it out of the urge to dominate the globe, they will do it because they will be alarmed that another country could get to it first and perform an economic breakaway that will lead to another superpower similar to what the US was. Besides, "Balkanization" was caused by warring muslim sand niggers that destroyed the economic potential of the area making it undesirable for absorption. The dissolution of the US will be an unprecedented event that can't be compared to "Balkanization."
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