Nobody “needs” to join the rat race.
You could diligently research to find good fits to ED and ED2 to and find several safeties/rolling you would be happy with (either in the US or overseas).
Then accept that schools with an RD acceptance rate below 20% (pretty much all of the private elites) will be lottery, so if you already have acceptable offers, fire off however many you like in the RD round but with limited expectations.