The rise of the rest: the financial crisis aside, China, India, Brazil, and much of the developing world is booming. It seems scary, but writer Fareed Zakaria thinks it's actually good news for the U.S.

• Author: Zakaria, Fareed
• Position: Cover story

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The world's tallest building is now in Dubai. The largest publicly traded company is in China. The largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The biggest movie industry is India's Bollywood, not Hollywood. And in the most recent Forbes rankings, only two of the world's 10 richest people are American.

Just 10 years ago, the United States--which for the last century has been used to leading the world--would have topped all these lists. Of course, some of these lists are a bit silly, but they actually do reflect a seismic shift in power and attitudes.

For the last 20 years, America's superpower status has been largely unchallenged--something that hasn't happened since the Roman Empire dominated the known world 2,000 years ago.

But at the same time, the global economy has accelerated dramatically. Many nations outside the industrialized West have been growing at rates that were once unthinkable. In fact, this is something much broader than the much-talked-about rise of China, or even Asia. It is the rise of the rest--the rest of the world.

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Why is this happening? It's because globalization has truly taken hold: More countries are making goods, and communications technology is leveling the playing field. Together, this has created huge opportunities for growth in many nations.

At the military and political level, the U.S. still remains supreme. But in every other way--industrial, financial, social, cultural--the distribution of power is moving away from American dominance.

AMERICA'S PERCEPTION

The post-American world is naturally an unsettling prospect for Americans, but it shouldn't be. These changes are not about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else. It is the result of a series of positive trends that have created an international climate of unprecedented peace and prosperity--which in the long run will only benefit America.

But that's not the world that Americans perceive. We are told that we live in dark, dangerous times. Terrorism, rogue states, nuclear proliferation, financial panics, outsourcing, and illegal immigrants all loom large in the national discourse. But just how dangerous is today's world, really?

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Researchers at the University of Maryland have found that global violence is actually at its lowest levels since the 1950s. Harvard professor Steven Pinker concludes that we are probably living "in the most peaceful time of our species' existence."

Then why do we think we live in scary times? Part of the reason is that as violence has been ebbing, information has been exploding. The last 20 years have produced an information revolution--24-hour news channels, cell phones, the Internet--that brings us news and, most crucially, images from around the world all the time.

Of course, the threats we face are real. Islamic jihadists, for example, really 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, but the combined efforts of the world's governments have effectively put them on the run.

Since 9/11, the main branch of Al Qaeda (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. Of course, one day they will manage to strike...