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The U.S. will remain the one reigning military superpower in this less heavily armed world. Its forces will shrink considerably to enable it to concentrate more of its energies on economic and social advances, but it will continue to provide global outreach with state-of-the-art weapons and an invulnerable nuclear arsenal. The U.S. will have to preserve this role because the technical know-how to build nuclear weapons cannot be abolished no matter how carefully arms-control treaties are drafted. Truly determined governments, among them many smaller nations that covet prestige and power, cannot be prevented from buying or building nuclear arms. The U.S. will have to be prepared to deter nuclear-armed dictators, and to intervene against them if necessary, in order to protect its friends and head off nuclear blackmail.
The competition that is normal and inevitable among nations will increasingly be played out in the 21st century not in aggression or war but in the economic sphere. The weapons used will be those of commerce: growth rates, investments, trade blocs, imports and exports. "The move to multinational trade blocs around the world has suppressed nationalism," says Gregory Schmidt of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, California. "Economics will eventually win out in the 21st century."
In his new best seller Head to Head, M.I.T. economist Lester Thurow writes, "World trade in the next half-century is apt to grow even faster that it did in the last half-century. Any decline in trade between the blocks will be more than offset by more trade within the blocks."
The big winner will be Europe. At the opening of the 21st century, the European Community will comprise an integrated market of 20 countries, newly including such advanced economies as Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Austria. By the middle of the century, it will have added the Czech republic, Hungary and Poland, and its members' population will total more than 400 million. By then, Ukraine, Russia and most of the rest of Eastern Europe will have achieved associate membership in the Community.
That last stage of Europe's growth will demand a lot of work. Eastern Europe's conversion from communist central planning to democratic market economies is one of the most difficult undertakings imaginable. As the Carnegie Endowment's National Commission referred to it in a report last July, "You can make fish soup out of an aquarium, but you can't make an aquarium out of fish soup."
What exists in Eastern Europe -- mostly antiquated factories, worthless currency and a socialist hangover -- will have to be replaced. What does not exist -- a commercial banking system, marketing networks, cost accounting -- will have to be created from scratch. The biggest hope for the future of the old socialist world is its very well-educated work force and a high level of science and technology.