The first part of your answer is like saying that there is nothing like forest, just individual trees, shrubs and animals. Feel free to ignore the networking effects, but they still exist.

Historical norm is indeed "major regional languages", but the historical norm is also "travelling with horse and buggy" and "a letter takes weeks if not months to reach another continent". These limitations is what limited reaches of any language to a single region or two. These limitations are now gone, and the Internet and fast travel methods like jets have connected previously separated regions into one huge region called the Earth.

And the claim of military supremacy is bullshit. The vast majority of people decides to learn English because two billion other people speak English and a ton of useful information is published in English. It is economically advantageous to nearly anyone to be fluent in English.

It helps that the script is easy to master, just 26 letters. That is a major downside of the Chinese script, it is really hard to master.