Fifteen to 20 years ago, a canny friend of mine assured me that I would know I was in a different world when the Europeans said no to Washington. I've been waiting all this time and last week it seemed as if the moment had finally arrived. Germany, France, and Italy all agreed to become "founding members" of a new Chinese-created development bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Great Britain, in "a rare breach of the special relationship," had already opted for membership the week before (and another key American ally deeply involved in the China trade, Australia, clearly will do so in the near future). As Andrew Higgins and David Sanger of the New York Times reported, the Obama administration views the new bank as a possible "rival to the World Bank and other institutions set up at the height of American power after World War II."
"The announcement by Germany, Europe's largest economy," continued the Times, "came only six days after Secretary of State John Kerry asked his German counterpart, Frank Walter-Steinmeier, to resist the Chinese overtures until the Chinese agreed to a number of conditions about transparency and governing of the new entity. But Germany came to the same conclusion that Britain did: China is such a large export and investment market for it that it cannot afford to stay on the sidelines."
All of this happened, in other words, despite strong opposition and powerful pressure from a Washington eager to contain China and regularly asserting its desire to "pivot" militarily to Asia to do so.
Whatever world we now inhabit, it's not the twentieth century anymore. Though no other power has risen to directly challenge Washington, the United States no longer qualifies as the planet's "sole superpower," "last superpower," "global sheriff," or any of the similarly self-congratulatory phrases that were the coin of the realm in the years after the Soviet Union dissolved.
Only one small problem, highlighted today by Pentagon expert and TomDispatch regular William Hartung: the Department of Defense evidently doesn't have a clue. As he makes clear, it's still planning for a sole superpower world in a big way. And in the present atmosphere in Washington, it's got real support for such planning. Take, for instance, Senator Tom Cotton -- he of the "Senate 47" -- who just gave his maiden speech on the Senate floor calling for a policy of total U.S. "global military dominance" and bemoaning that "our military, suffering from years of neglect, has seen its relative strength decline to historic levels."
It may be a new world in some places, but in others, as Hartung makes clear in "Military Strategy? Who Needs It?," it couldn't be older.