And all living at the time remember the Cuban Missile Crisis -- Soviet nuclear missiles 90 miles away -- and the world just "this" close to war (jfk library, n.d.). This was no joke and no game. It was real and it was scary. The end of the Cold War removed that fear, and, for a while made us all feel safer. That is why the end of the Cold War has to be the one overriding significant event of the 1990s and the one that most impacted our country and its citizens.

It wasn't until September 11, 2001 that the U.S. really had to face its fear again in the images of terrorism on our television screens, and the future possibility that they, and countries friendly to terrorism, might again own the nuclear capability.

The Future -- China Rise, U.S. Decline

China will surge as one of the world's economic leaders by 2020. As China surges, so will the United States lose its dominance as the only superpower on the globe today. That China has already become one of the world's leading powers is not in dispute. If they are, indeed, an economic behemoth in 2010, they will be even more so in ten years. Their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is forecast to double, from $3.3 trillion in 2005 dollars, to $7.1 trillion in 2020. At that point, its economy will be second only to the United States (Klare, 2010).

Global Trends 2025, a strategic assessment of the upcoming decades prepared for the incoming Obama administration by the National Intelligence Council (NIC), predicts that the U.S. will remain the most powerful nation, but its relative strength will decline and U.S. leverage around the globe will become more contrained (Klare, 2010).

An increasingly competitive world economy will mean that U.S. firms have less dominance.

Some sectors of the economy will thrive, but others will take a hit. The U.S.
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