Hard to know where to begin in replying to your comment. Agree The Economist is not what it was. It has lost some of its edge, but not all of it. And in this issue it makes the point that a decision not to defend Taiwan would mean the end of the US role in the region and probably the world. No country could ever again rely on a US security guarantee, in the first instance Japan. That makes the stakes very high, much higher than the other places you list. As for the South China Sea, the region has never been as crucial to the US as north Asia. Witness its departure from Vietnam, unlike Korea, and then from The Philippines. The US withdrawal from Vietnam was, alas for us in the region, recognition of the limits of US power and recognition by the US that Sth-East Asia was ultimately China’s backyard.