& çâÌæÚUæð´ ·¤è ¥ôÚU Îð¹Ùæ ÁæÚUè ÚU¹ð´ ¥ÍæüÌ ¥ÂÙð ÜÿØ ÂÚU ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´Ð ãæÚU Ù ×æÙð´, €UØô´ç·¤ ·¤æ× ·¤ÚUÙð âð ¥æÂ·¤ô ©gðàØ ·¤è Âýæç# ãôÌè ãñ ¥õÚU ÁèßÙ ·¤æ ¹æÜèÂÙ ÎêÚU ãôÌæ ãñÐ ÖÜð ãè ÁèßÙ ×ð´ ç·¤ÌÙè Öè ·¤çÆÙæ§ü €UØô´ Ù ¥æ°, çÁ™ææâæ ¥õÚU ©ˆâæã ÕÙæ° ÚU¹ð´Ð ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´, ÜÿØ ã×ðàææ ¥æÂ·Ô¤ Âæâ ãôÌð ãñ´ çÁ‹ãð´ ÂæÙð ·Ô¤ çÜ° ÂýØæâ ¥æÂ ·¤Öè Öè àæéM¤ ·¤ÚU â·¤Ìð ãñ´Ð

The rise of the rest: The good news

But before we all sign on for a new Cold tt/ar, let’s take a deep breath and gain some perspective. Today's rising great powers are relatively benign by historical measure. In the past, when countries grew rich they've wanted to become great military powers, overturn the existing order, and create their own empires or spheres of influence.

Fareed Zakaria antes from Washington
THE threats we face are real. Islamicjihadists area nasty bunch •- they do want to attack civilians everywhere. But it is increasingly clear that militants and suicide bombers make up a tiny portion of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims. They can do real damage, especially if they get their hands on nuclear weapons. But the combined efforts of the world's governments have effectively put them on the run and continue to track them and their money.
Jihad persists, but the jihadists haw had to scatter, work in small local cells, and use simple and undetectable weapons. They have not been able to hit big. symbolic targets, especially ones involving Americans. So they blow up bombs in cafes, marketplaces, and subway
stations. The problem is that in doing so. they kill locals and alienate ordinary Muslims. Look at the polls. Support for violence of any kind has dropped dramatically over the last five years in all Muslim countries.
Militant groups have reconstituted in certain areas where they exploit a particular local issue or have support from a local ethnic group or sect, most worryingly in Pakistan and Afghanistan where Islamic radicalism has become associated with Pashtun identity politics. But as a result, these groups are becoming more local and less global. Al Qaeda in Iraq, for example, has turned into a group that is more anti-Shiite than anti-American.
The bottom line is this: since 9/11, Al Qaeda Central, the gang run by Osama bin Laden, has not been able to launch a single major terror attack in the West or any Arab country' - its original targets. They used to do terrorism, now they make videotapes. Of course one
day they will get lucky again, but that they have been stymied for almost seven years points out that in this battle between governments and tenor groups, the former need not despair.
Some point to the dangers posed by countries like Iran. These rogue states present real problems, but look at them in context. The American economy is 68 times the size of Iran's. Its military budget is 110 times that of the mullahs. Were Iran to attain a nuclear capacity, it would complicate die geopolitics of the Middle East. But none of the problems we face compare widi the dangers posed by a rising Germany in die first half of the 20th century or an expansionist Soviet Union in die second half. Those were great global powers bent on world domination. If this is 1938, as some neo-conservauves tell us, then Iran is Romania, not Germany.
Others paint a dark picture of a world in which dictators are on the march. China and Russia and
assorted odier oil potentates are surging. We must draw the battle Unes now, they warn, and engage in a great Manichean struggle that will define die next century. Some of John McCain's rhetoric has suggested that he adheres to this dire, dyspeptic view.
But before we all sign on for a new Cold War, let's take a deep breath and gain some perspective. Today's rising great powers are relatively benign by historical measure. In the past, when countries grew rich they've wanted to become great military powers, overturn die existing order, and create tiieir own empires or spheres of influence. But since the rise of Japan and Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, none have done this, choosing instead to get rich within the existing internationalorder.
China and India are clearly moving in this direction. Even Russia, the most aggressive and revanchist great power today, has done little tiiat compares with past aggressors. Th? fact that for the first
time in history, the United States can contest Russian influence in Ukraine -- a country 4,800 miles away from Washington that Russia has dominated or ruled for 350 years -- tcUs us something about the balance of power between the West and Russia.
Compare Russia and China witii where they were 35 years ago. At the time both (particularly Russia) were great power threats, actively conspiring against the United States, arming guerrUla movement across the globe, funding insurgencies and civil wars, blocking every American plan in the United Nations. Now they are more integrated into the global economy and society than at any point in at least 100 years. They occupy an uncomfortable gray zone, neither friends nor foes, cooperating with the United States and the West on some issues, obstructing others. But how large is their potential fortrouble?
Russia's military spending is $35 billion, or 1 /20th of the Pentagon's. China has about 20 nuclear missiles that can reach the United States. We have 830 missiles, most with multiple warheads, that can reach China. Who should be worried about whom? Other rising autocracies like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are close US allies that shelter under
America's military protection, buy its weapons, invest in its companies, and follow many of its diktats. With Iran's ambitions growing in the region, these countries are likely to become even closer allies, unless America gratuitously alienates them.
Thegoodnews
In July 2006, 1 spoke with a senior member of the Israeli government, a few days after Israel's war with Hezbollah had ended. He was genuinely worried about his country's physical security. Hezbollah's rockets had reached farther into Israel than people had believed possible. The military response had clearly been ineffectual: Hezbollah launched as many rockets on the last day of the war as on the first. Then I asked him about the economy -- the area in which he worked. His response was striking. "That's puzzled all of us," he said. "The stock market was higher on the last day of the war than on the first! The same Ivith the shekel." The government was spooked, but the market wasn't.
Or consider the Iraq War, which has produced deep, lasting chaos and dysfunction in that country. Over two million refugees have crowded into neighboring lands. That would seem to be the kind of
political crisis guaranteed to spill over. But as I've traveled in the Middle East over the last few years, I've been struck by how little Iraq's troubles have destabilised the region.
Everywhere you go, people angrily denounce American foreign policy. But most Middle Eastern countries are booming. Iraq's neighbours - Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia - are enjoying unprecedented prosperity. The Gulf states are busy modernising their economies and societies, asking the Louvre, New York University, and Cornell Medical School to set up remote branches in the desert. There's little evidence of chaos, instability, arrd rampant Islamic fundamentalism.
The underlying reality across the globe is of enormous vitality. For the first time ever, most countries around the world arc practicing sensible economics. Consider inflation. Over the past 20 years hyper-inflation, a problem that used to bedevil large swaths of the world from Turkey to Brazil to Indonesia, has largely vanished, tamed by successful fiscal and monetary policies.
The results are clear and stunning. The share of people living on $1 a day has plummeted from 40
percent in 1981 to 18 percent in 2004 and is estimated to drop to 12 percent by 2015. Poverty is falling in countries that house 80 percent of the world's population.
There remains real poverty in the world -- most worryingly in 50 basket-case countries that contain 1 billion people -- but the overall trend has never been more encouraging. The global economy has more than doubled in size over the last 15 years and is now approaching $54 trillion! Global trade has grown by 133 percent in the same period.
The expansion of the global economic pie has been so large, with so many countries participating, that it has become the dominating force of the current era. Wars, terrorism, and civil strife cause disruptions temporarily but eventually they are overwhelmed by the waves of globalisation. These circum-stances may not last, but It is worth understanding what the world has looked like for the past few decades.
Fareed Zakaria is Editor of Newsweek International. This piece is part two of a four-part series.
© Newsweek International. All rights reserved. Reprinted by arrangement.