We have one. It's called "the browser". The discussion is whether or not we need a higher level API than that. If we do, maybe that should also be a part of the browser's API.
As it is, there multiple browsers supporting different levels of features.
That's the whole reason why frameworks are made in the first place dating back to jQuery.
All browsers that matter now support a solid common set of features which should be sufficient for the vast majority of cases.
All it takes is one of those non majority use cases and you're going to need some kind of dependency to get things consistent
With React, you can make it work with older browsers using Polyfill etc.
Try using DOM APIs to build anything remotely complex or interactive. There's a reason everyone who only uses browser APIs ends up just dumping strings into the DOM via innerHtml.
I think the core question is: Are we building something complex or interactive. I don't see the need for React or other frameworks unless you're storing a lot of mutable states client-side. But more often than not, all I see is replicating the database through API endpoints.