EDITORIAL
Gloom, but Not Doom
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/opinion/04thu1.html?ref=opinion

There's been a fair amount of hand-wringing since the nation's intelligence community surveyed the world of 2025: America losing dominance; China and India rising; fierce competition for water, food and energy; increased danger that terrorists will get a nuclear weapon.

That's all sobering. But the headlines from "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World," published by the National Intelligence Council, are not the whole story.

President-elect Barack Obama is inheriting a world that is more complicated and more frightening than the one George W. Bush found in 2001. But while the trends may be apparent, the end results are not inevitable. Decisions Mr. Obama and other leaders make will matter more.

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Giving rising powers a bigger role — in the United Nations Security Council, for instance — could help persuade them to take more responsibility for problems like terrorism, climate change, nonproliferation and energy security.