With Barack Obama's administration pivoting toward Asia and with the U.S. president now off to Hawaii for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit (and then to Australia and Indonesia), let's remember that the most important trip of his time in office was not east but south. In March, in the midst of the fallout from Japan's tsunami and nuclear meltdown and the brutal escalation in Libya, Obama made an international trip the Western media almost entirely ignored.

As the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks passed, Americans are searching for a new narrative to understand their country’s role in the world. But far more than declared principles or personalities, America’s place in the world is shaped by what it does in other places. Especially overseas, societies judge us by our actions rather than our words.

To understand 21st century geopolitics, think of the global capitalist system: it is a marketplace, not a monopoly. In this diffuse network of nodes and connections, stronger and weaker ties, interdependencies and feedback loops, bad decisions are punished almost as quickly as the stock market punishes bad business models. We have just lived through the inaugural cycle of this geopolitical marketplace. Two decades ago, president George H.W. Bush proclaimed a "New World Order" at the United Nations General Assembly, yet today's world is multipolar and leaderless.

Call it recycling opportunity. After their failed bid to host the 2004 Summer Olympics, Stockholm city leaders decided to turn a would-be sports village in the Hammarby Sjostad district into one of the world's most successful eco-villages. The practices of powering buses with biogas, recycling rainwater for irrigation and using organic waste for fertilizer spread to other districts of Sweden's largest city. Today the city's water is so clean that fishermen actually stand on bridges in the central business district, catching fresh salmon and trout.