Semiconductors are one of the most valuable technologies of the modern era. Less than a dozen countries make them.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/semiconductor-manufacturing-by-country

Those countries are Japan, Taiwan, US, China, Germany, South Korea, UK, Malaysia, Netherlands, Israel.

The semiconductor industry started in 1960. That means the rest of the world is technologically more than 80 years behind these nation states.

The whole world today relies on technology to keep scaling up capability but relevant technologies needed to run society have their production limited to very few nation states with the necessary specialization. Most of the world is incapable of running a modern day society if global trade stopped.

The fact that China can produce its own semiconductors makes it one of the most advanced societies in the world. Making it relevant on the world stage for centuries to come.

Taking into account that most of the world will not be capable of running their own semi conductor factories for decades to come, we can safely conclude that technologically most of the nation states of the world are more than a century behind the most technologically advanced nation states in the world.

In the past this wide a technological gap was easily enough for an empire to conquer neighboring empires without issue.

We can infer from the above that without the existence of nukes the US and China would be more than capable of conquering the rest of the planet through warfare.

China is about 30 years behind the US technologically. Which gives the US the technological edge if any non nuclear conflict were to break out between the US and China.

In conclusion:

The modern era is kept going by less than a dozen nation states, everybody else is living in their world.