When future historians look back at the major shift in power that came in the fall of 2008, they will focus not just on the election of Barack Obama. Less than two weeks after Obama's historic election, finance ministers and central bank governors from the G-20 nations convened in Washington at the height of a global panic to discuss the future of global finance.

While some leaders tried to use the meeting to address big issues in a big way (German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that the summit was "about no less and no more than the creation of a new financial constitution"), the meeting ended with little more than a whimper.

Even taking into account the constraints of limited preparation time and the lame-duck status of the Bush Administration, one thing stands out -- the failure of the United States to provide affirmative leadership on how to prevent similar crises in the future. This may ultimately represent a significant turning point away from U.S. financial primacy and leadership around the globe.

Much of the rest of the world sees the current global financial crisis simultaneously as: a) America's fault; b) a very big deal and c) worthy of a rethinking of the basic assumptions of U.S.-style capitalism. But the United States doesn't appear to recognize how much anger and blame is being cast its way.

Eric Besson, the French Minster for Policy Planning, noted that there is a sense in the United States that the current relative market calm is evidence that the "financial crisis was a ‘little car accident' caused by a few specific U.S. problems and that it would soon be ‘back to business as usual.'"

By contrast, a recent poll conducted in Eastern Germany found that, as a result of this crisis, 52% had lost all confidence in the free market economy while 43% would support a return to socialism. That's no fender bender, that's a train wreck.

While no G-20 countries are currently advocating socialism, most member countries -- but not the United States -- openly sought more tangible results from the November 2008 summit. Immediately prior to the meeting, leaders from some 40 major European and Asian countries met in China and stressed the need for the Washington summit to be "a place where we make some decisions, [as] we have all understood that it would not be possible to simply meet and have a discussion."

But in the end, the G-20 summit ended with a lengthy communiqué and without tangible reforms or decisions. This has left a big opening for other countries with more ambitious agendas to step up.

For example, in mid-January 2009, French President Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair hosted a meeting in Paris to address the issues that the Washington-based G-20 meeting neatly skirted.

Titled "New World: Values, Development and Regulation," participants discussed difficult but fundamental issues, including the role of the state in a market-based economy. The discussion also addressed the issue of which institutions and values should regulate and govern capitalist systems.

The message of the meeting was perhaps most succinctly delivered by President Sarkozy, who first questioned the morality and logic of American-style capitalism. He then observed, "In the 21st century, there is no longer only one country that says what we should do and think. We will not accept any return to a single way of thought." No one from the U.S. government was in attendance.

Failure by the United States to take meetings like this one seriously is dangerous. As Professors Bruce Jentleson and Steven Weber recently noted, "The rules have changed, and the biggest and most basic questions of world politics are open for debate once again."

It appears that the financial crisis has opened the door for others to question not only whether the United States is up to the task of driving and policing how the world's financial systems operate. Perhaps it also extends to a broader question about U.S. leadership, international alliances and the world order.

This global financial crisis -- and the sense of collective financial insecurity it triggered -- brought together nations as bedfellows in ways that seemed unlikely only weeks before. For example, as a result of the crisis, Iceland sought a sovereign bailout from Russia.

China joined with South Korea, Japan and ten Southeast Asian nations in the creation of an $80 billion fund that the countries could use to defend their currencies. China not only agreed to refinance one of Russia's oil companies, but it also announced that it had commenced more timely phone conversations with long-time rival Japan to better coordinate their responses to the crisis.

In Europe, Britain's Labor Prime Minister Brown and France's Gaullist President Sarkozy were, for some weeks, almost inseparable. In spite of Britain's failure to adopt the euro and traditional friction between the two countries, Brown was nevertheless given a prominent role at Sarkozy's eurozone summit.

And the EU itself, often seen by critics as incapable of action in times of crisis, surmounted structural hurdles to collectively raise two billion euros on the global capital markets to help bail out member state Hungary.

The financial crisis apparently opened up for discussion bilateral and regional alliances in a way that decades of traditional diplomacy did not. Countries came together through a combination of financial fear and by a common belief that they were brought to their knees as a result of the free market capitalist model so proudly advocated by the United States.

It also gave new life to the G-20, which will now meet again in April 2009 in London under the auspices of the UK government. One of the unexpected consequences of the financial crisis is the potential establishment of the G-20 as the new forum at which many of the world's most pressing economic problems will be discussed and addressed.

For the first time, many of the world's fastest growing emerging market economies, including India, China, Brazil and Saudi Arabia, will have a seat at the head table. And, what's more important, neither the United States nor anyone else has a veto.

That means that the G-20, whose members represent over 85% of the world's economic output, is likely to be a more competitive platform for diplomacy, ideas and intellectual leadership.

All of this is why the April G-20 meeting represents a prime opportunity for the incoming Obama Administration to demonstrate that the United States is willing to acknowledge the centrality of its role in the global financial crisis and to take on the burden of leading a discussion of how to fix what went wrong.

However, that summit could just as easily represent a forum in which the United States is left chasing after others who recognize the opportunity to capitalize on the upheaval that the financial crisis has wrought.

November's Washington meeting represented a missed opportunity for the United States to reestablish itself as the only country worthy of being entrusted with leadership of the world's financial system -- and the political and ideological responsibilities that entails.

It is up to the next administration to ensure that it understands how fragile the U.S. seat at the head of that global table has become. Let us hope that the April meeting does not deteriorate into the G-19 plus one.