Text 11 Extrapolating the recent economic past into the future is a hopeless endeavor, while globalization has steadily

increased since WW2 it cannot be assumed it will continue forever. Since the year 1000 in the east weve seen Japan take a lead in living standards and technology with china rapidly increasing its geopolitical importance due to its high population and rapid industrialization and South Korea is getting closer and closer to Japans level of development, North Korea on the other hand is a basket case and the collapse of its regime and the forming of a unified Korea should not be surprising. Challenges in the Region are the continued presence of US military forces in South Korea, and the possible democratization of China. The five Islamic republics in Central Asia are still underdeveloped but have large natural resource reserves which could be used to finance their modernization, Kazakhstan in particular has large oil reserves and a large Russian minority population which gives the Russians an advantage when competing for influence with the other large neighbor China. Uzbekistan has a large Turkic speaking population and thus a natural ally in Turkey, the United states is of course also interested in the region mostly because of Afghanistan, seeking both energy and military bases. In South Asia India has a strong democratic tradition and since liberalizing its markets in the 1990s a strong economic performance as well, Pakistan has had an unstable series of military dictatorships and short lived democracies, both states possess nuclear weapons and have territorial tensions over the Kashmir province, a part of India. In South East Asia Singapore is a key hub for global trade, Malaysia is a prosperous, democratic Muslim country with an important Chinese minority and Indonesia is a recently democratic Muslim country with a history of unstable dictatorships could have problems with Islamic extremism in the future if the economic situation in the country deteriorates. Christian Philippines has an active democracy and creditable economic performance based on primary exports, the same things happens in Buddhist Thailand both country also share annoying Islamic insurgencies. Vietnam is now a vibrant market economy open to the world even though it remains a one party state, Burma is the only closed society left in the region and it looks like it will remain that way. Main tensions are the predicted rise of china and disputes over the control of the oil deposits in the South China sea. The middle east has seen its place in the world fall since 1000 and currently a lot of its income and the living standards of its people rest on top of its oil reserves. The region has seen many wars since WW2 most of them involving either Israel or Iraq. The region has had very low growth rates despite its oil reserves and the richest country in the region is Israel although as can be seen in turkey and Malaysia islam In and of itself does not appear to be an obstacle to growth. In Eastern Europe Romania and Bulgaria have joined the EU trying to break with their past as members of the soviet block and Russia has used its oil and gas reserves to recentralize its economy although it is still far freer than it was in the days of the USSR. Russia has diminished

greatly since those days and it is now struggling to hang onto its influence in the Ukraine and Georgia as well as the central Asian states, in the wider scheme of things it mainly seeks to cooperate with china to check US power. In post WW2 western europe the various nation states have been successfully integrated into the EU which is now peacefully expanding eastward, its income is high but is declining as a share of the worlds because of the rapid growth of the asian economies. In sub-saharan Africa its history of slavery colonization and its relative isolation from the rest of the world have crippled its economic development historically, in recent years its potential has been further restricted by numerous military conflicts that have plagued the region since gaining independence. In recent years the region is becoming increasingly peacefully and democratic so there is hope that in the near future things will get better. The future of globalization: economic challenges.