Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

While Washington clings to its Cold War mind-set and global strategy, the world is moving on. The BRICS summit just held in Brazil marks a new phase on the road to an updated international system.

The Fortaleza Declaration issued by BRICS participants continues the line of the Delhi Declaration issued by participants at the fourth BRICS summit in 2012. The new declaration contains significant concrete measures, such as the new development bank to promote global development in an emerging multipolar context.

Such creative thinking, focusing on peace and development, contrasts markedly with US policy and Washington's quixotic and counterproductive design to perpetuate US hegemony for the next century. 

The foreign policy elite in the US is stuck in the past. The mind-set of the dominant elite reflects a simplistic narrative which begins in 1945. In this view, the US won WWII, created the postwar world, and rightly became the global sheriff.

Just after WWII, the US lost a balance between the diplomatic and military tools of policy. This led to US concept of the securitization of the planet as expressed in the notorious National Security Council memorandum of 1950 that militarized US diplomacy and national strategy.

Washington scrambled to create all manner of Cold War alliances to contain the Eurasian landmass meaning the Soviet Union and China. So NATO was followed by Central Treaty Organization, Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, and Australia, New Zealand, US Security Treaty.

This flight forward into various entangling alliances was driven by the anticommunist hysteria which had gripped US politicians and policymakers. My old professor of diplomatic history called this phenomenon "pactomania."

Nothing has changed in Washington. The hysteria remains as does the obsession with alliances. Russia, China, and the Islamic world are conjured up as the global goblins. It is not surprising that the US has been at great pains over the past four decades to strengthen not only NATO but also the "hub and spokes" alliances in the Pacific. The centerpiece of this effort in the Pacific is the US-Japan defense alliance.

Although it has received particular emphasis by the Obama administration as part of the "pivot" to Asia, the alliance with Japan has been systematically developed since the 1970s.

Washington promoted the idea of the "interoperability" of US and Japanese military hardware since the Clinton administration. Washington also consistently encouraged Japanese leaders to break out from constitutional restraints on the use of Japanese military forces.

As Japan breaks out from such restraints, Washington believes that defense cooperation with Japan will become more intense and will include profitable bilateral deals with respect to military hardware. Furthermore, by Washington's meddling in the Asia-Pacific region to stir the pot, regional tensions will increase. 

In such a situation, it is believed that the US will have a better market for foreign weapons sales. This shortsighted and provocative policy is dangerous and can lead to war.

Does Washington's "pactomania" and obsession with perpetual hegemony have a future? Realists argue that there is no such future. History demonstrates the consequences of imperial overstretch. The recent BRICS summit demonstrates the present trend away from hegemony and toward multipolarity in the international system. It also underscores the view that the present era is one of peace and development.

Rather than ramp up obsolete security structures and alliances, Washington needs to take a deep breath and carefully reflect on where it has been and where it is going. The world is moving on as the BRICS process demonstrates.

Washington must undertake an agonizing reappraisal of its national strategy and foreign policy in light of a changing world.

The author is an educator and former senior professional staff member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn