The Big Picture

Michael Barone (Townhall.com)

It's often hard to keep the big picture in focus. Television
news tends to center on bombs going off in Iraq and has
mostly ignored several million people voting in Afghanistan.
We see footage of angry Palestinians, but not much about
the ongoing progress toward democracy in Egypt. Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita in turn have dominated the news and have
made it difficult to get a sense of what is happening in the
world.

A world spinning out of control: That is what the old-line
broadcast networks seem to be showing us. But I see other
patterns. George W. Bush has consistently asserted that one
reason for removing Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was to
advance freedom and democracy in the Middle East. In spite
of the improvised explosive devices, that seems to be
happening. Lebanon's Cedar Revolution was as inspiring an
example of people power as the fall of the Berlin Wall in
1989. Libya has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction.
Egypt, by far the largest Arab nation, had its first
contested election this month, and, as the Washington Post's
David Ignatius writes from Cairo, "the power of the reform
movement in the Arab world today ... is potent because it's
coming from the Arab societies themselves and not just from
democracy enthusiasts in Washington." Which is evidence that
Bush was right: Muslims and Arabs, like people everywhere,
want liberty and self-rule. Afghanistan has just voted, and
Iraq is about to vote a second time this year. Violence
continues, but the more important story is that democracy
and freedom are advancing.

True, the news is not positive everywhere. Iran seems
determined not to give up its nuclear weapons programs,
and the efforts of the British, French and Germans have not
stopped them. The good news is that the British, French and
Germans appear to recognize this. North Korea also, despite
initialing a draft agreement, seems bent on building more
nukes. The bright side is that China, the one country with
leverage over Kim Jong Il, seems more inclined to use it.
The problem here is evil regimes against which we have no
real military options. The best hope for a solution is
peaceful regime change, of the kind endorsed by Michael
Ledeen on the right and Peter Ackerman on the left.
Polls show that most Americans think the economy is in
dreadful shape, even though almost all the numbers are
good: Inflation and unemployment are low, and growth is
robust despite the exogenous shocks of Sept. 11, Enron
and Katrina. After a generation of almost constant low-
inflation economic growth, perhaps we Americans are only
satisfied when we have bubble growth, as in the late 1990s,
and are unimpressed when the American economy proves once
again to be amazingly resilient. This is all the more
astonishing when you consider that we are going through a
time of increased competition and change, as China and
India, with 37 percent of the world's population, are
transforming their economies from Third World to First
World. Such a large proportion of mankind moving rapidly
upward: This has never happened before and will never
happen again.

Couple this with the facts that Japan seems to be growing
again, after 15 years of deflation, that East Asia and
Eastern Europe continue to grow robustly, and that major
Latin countries like Mexico and Brazil are growing as well,
and the economic picture around the world looks pretty
good, despite sclerotic non-growth in western Europe and
continued poverty in Africa.

But even if things are going well, isn't America hated
around the world? By the elites and chattering classes of
many countries, yes, and by much of the American elite and
chattering class as well. But we are not competing in a
popularity contest. In a unipolar world, the single
superpower will always arouse envy and dislike. The relevant
question is if we can live safely in the world; the French
may dislike us, but we can live comfortably with France.
The recent Pew Trust polls showing diminishing support for
Islamist terrorism in Muslim countries indicate things are
moving in the right direction. The increasing interweaving
of China into the international economy suggests China may
not be a military threat. A world spinning out of control?

No, it is more like a world moving, with some backward
steps, in the direction we want.