Talk politics.

I think the change is more that the world won't be led by the US solely anymore. And I do not think that the US has learned anything. Just the same as the next sole hegemonic power (whenever they will come) will do all of the same things the US did. It is the role one is forced to play being at the top and alone.

I also wouldn't be so quick to put down the military prowess of a few thousand goat herders in Afghanistan. Those same goat herders stopped the Russian army in its tracks not very long ago. It is one thing to fight the conventional army of an offensive nation, it is another to bring the war right into their own homes. It was a war that in many ways the US and its coalition partners was never going to "win" not the least of which was because there was never a line in the sand of exactly what winning meant. Expecting a military to build a democratic nation, in my mind, was one of the most naïve and immature assumptions we made while patting ourselves on the back for being so modern and progressive in our approach to modern warfare.

And regarding nuclear weapons there is another weakness that is becoming more significant for the US arsenal. Nukes are great and the US has a robust system in place for command and control. However, they require GPS, they all require GPS to function at all. When we made the GPS system the US dominated space exploration and launches. But this has changed, so much so that private companies are now arguably more capable than the US for getting things into space and doing things while we're up there. How long do you think those GPS satelites that we need will last in the event of a real war breaking out with the waning super power? I'll throw a little speculation into this post for good measure since we're talking politics, perhaps, just maybe, going back to the moon has something to do with making our precious GPS system less accessible to every day people.