The World in 2003 [antikvár]

A 5 will be a year in which thel/l/Jworld, improbably, becomes safer and more prosperous. Its major economies will all avoid recession; indeed, while plagued by government deficits and síim corporate proíits, they will manage to grow at a fair clipsomé 2.5%. The growth rate in Asia, where a quarter of humanity lives, will be considerably faster. Terrorism will strike again in 2003. But the near-universal condemnation of it, in countries rich and poor, Muslim and Christian, will show that the zealots are destined to fail. A few extremists with nothing to offer but destruction will not carry change to the wider world.The great danger, that a rogue state might acquire and threaten to use weapons of mass destruction, will passas will the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. For the short term, at least, no nation will be able to obtain these weapons with impunity. Both America and Russia will be actively dismantling their own stockpiles in 2003.The year's headlines will be dominated by war, the Middle East and recession. Look behind them, however, and you will see a world that is improving. Population growth will slow. Life expectancy will stretch, though neither in Africa nor Russia. The benefits of globalisationfrom a vaccine for malaria to genetically modified crops for the third worldwill spread.It will be a year mercifully, and most unusually, free of elections. No political leadership in any of the big nations need change: what you see now is what you will have for the next year. (The one important new face is China's Wen Jiabao, a reformer, who becomes premier in March.) In America, there will be the single-minded pursuit of terrorism. As a sideshow, there will be the unedifying, but undoubtedly entertaining, spectacle of a number of businessexecutives on trial: a salutary lesson for America's boardrooms. And there will be enough of a recovery on Wall Street to allow the great business of wealth creation to continue, abashed and abated but not mortally wounded. Europe will keep up its rapid pace of change under the camouflage of indolence. The year will be spent bringing ten new countries into the European Union (with every parliament taking months debating this inevitability). There will be progress towards a European constitution that will be much mocked but necessary.Britain will be the most thriving economy in Western Europe (Russia doing best in the east). The government, the least indebted in Europe, will be splashing out on health services, transport and schools. And from February 27th no one will be able to drive into central London without being charged: an experiment other cities will closely watch.The most exciting developments for humanity in 2003 will be in molecular biomedicine. The humán genome will be completely mapped. The ability to change humankind's molecular cell structures to altér who we are will raise the knottiest questions of 2003. And as a reminder of the speed of science-driven change, it will be the year many predicted would never come: mobile phones become more numerous in the world than conventional ones.These are somé of the ideas, right or wrong, to be found in The World in 2003. You may be reading them in any one of 94 countries or 15 languages. I hope they are valuable, entertaining and even accurate.Dudley FishburnEditor, The World in 2003