Last year, the leaders of all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council visited India, accompanied by delegations of business leaders.
The current tensions between China and Japan have revived talk about how far Japan has fallen since its glory years of the 1980's.
Global government is unlikely in the twenty-first century, but various degrees of global governance already exist.
In the 1950's, many Americans feared that the Soviet Union would surpass the United States as the world's leading power. The Soviet Union had the world's largest territory, the third largest population, and the second largest economy, and it produced more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia.
The G-20 is focusing on the need to "re-balance" financial flows, altering the old pattern of US deficits matching Chinese surpluses, instead requiring America increasing its savings and China increasing domestic consumption.
With its current levels of immigration, America is one of the few developed countries that may avoid demographic decline, but this might change if reactions to terrorist events or public xenophobia closed the borders.
Brazil, Russia, India, and China recently held their second annual summit in Brasilia. Journalists continue to lavish attention on these so-called "BRIC" countries, but I remain skeptical of the concept.
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