It is justifiable to end a history of the world with
more positive reflections. During the century that
now lies behind, wars and tyrannical regimes
resulted in the deaths of at least 200 million
people, most of them civilians, and even more
millions suffered injury and loss. The century that
saw so much material progress for the survivors
was a graveyard for others.
The threat to life has been reduced to a frac-
tion of the cataclysmic total of the twentieth
century. Europe, in the past a cauldron of wars,
is peacefully coming together for common pur-
poses. Russia has ceased to be a threat and, in
turn, has ceased to feel threatened by the West.
The alliance of NATO against the Soviet Union
has been transformed into an association with it.
The Balkan fires have been smothered.
There are dangers in Asia. India and Pakistan,
both nuclear powers, are still unable to settle their
Kashmir dispute, but the nuclear stand-off, like
a mini-Cold War situation of mutual assured
destruction, makes their leaders draw back from
the brink. Their economies are growing though
many obstacles to more rapid development
persist. Perhaps the most unexpected change has
been the global integration of China just a decade
and a half after the brutal Tiananmen suppression.
The Chinese people enjoy more freedoms, as long
as they accept the control of the one-party com-
munist leadership. The most severe curtailment of
personal freedom was the draconian one child per
couple policy to limit population growth. Its
success is leading to relaxation. The Chinese army
is the regime’s safeguard of internal control and
is not intended as a means of external aggression.
Bitter ideological differences with Taiwan have
been papered over internationally and the war of
words has remained just that.
The Japanese people who, alone, have suffered
the devastation of a nuclear attack, like the
Germans, have purged themselves of ambitions of
war and aggression. Though their economy has
stagnated for a decade, Japan remains by far the
wealthiest and most powerful economy in Asia, an
important partner of global economic health. The
superiority of a market economy over rigid com-
munist state control, of representative institutions
over tyranny, is demonstrated by the contrast
between South Korea and North Korea. North
Korea, with a nuclear programme and a million-
strong army, is a threat, but the North Korean
regime is isolated, economically a disaster, and
desperately needs Western help and relief: a
‘rogue state’ that is being, and has to be, con-
tained. Tyrannical regimes have become the
exception and are no longer spreading like cancer
across the globe. The benefits of the market
economy and governments accountable to the
people are becoming dominant. Possibly it is a
hopeful pointer to a better future globally that
some conflicts which only a short while ago
seemed incapable of any resolution have ended in
a truce in regions widely apart. The fighting
between the Sri Lankan government and the
Tamil Tigers ended in 2002, the IRA ceased
its bombing and violence in Northern Ireland
in 1994, and the conflict between Taiwan and
the People’s Republic of China remains a war of
words; in the Sudan the Muslim government in
the north ended the war in the south by negoti-
ation with the help of the UN.
The fears that population growth which passed
the six billion mark at the turn of the twenty-first
century could outstrip the planet’s resources have
once again been found to be misplaced. Although
the world’s population astonishingly doubled in
just the last forty years the increase has slowed.
There is, in the twenty-first century, a growing
awareness of dangers ahead and the world leaders
are making efforts to meet them. Standards of
living are rising, though unevenly in different
regions; they are accelerating faster in the devel-
oped world with the gap between rich and poor
widening. That issue, too, is on the world agenda.
This disparity, more than wars and persecution
has led to the enterprising seeking better oppor-
tunities and a better life for themselves and their
families. Opportunities for migration to the devel-
oped world for those without means of skills in
demand are severely restricted. The poor coun-
tries suffer from the brain drain of, for instance,
the skilled and doctors and nurses they have
trained at home who fill the gaps in developed
nations, but no one wants large numbers of
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