The Financial Times (via the DailyKos) has written that becoming the world's only superpower militarily has had unintended effects under this administration. Faced with the prospect of bowing before US power or forging institutions to counter balance US influence, the rest of the world has set about forging the latter without US participation. The article lists example after example how the US is becoming irrelevant in many areas.
It's no suprise that while the US is wasting its wealth and youth fighting a misbegotten war in Iraq, that the rest of the world has moved ahead with building international networks without us. In doing so, it had become increasingly clear that US participation is not necessarily needed, much less US leadership.
"In other areas of global moral and institutional reform, the US today is a follower rather than a leader. Human rights? Europe has banned the death penalty and torture, while the US is a leading practitioner of execution. Under Mr Bush, the US has constructed an international military gulag in which the torture of suspects has frequently occurred. The international rule of law? For generations, promoting international law in collaboration with other nations was a US goal. But the neoconservatives who dominate Washington today mock the very idea of international law. The next US attorney general will be the White House counsel who scorned the Geneva Conventions as obsolete." Financial Times.
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