.:Confessions of An Information Junkie:.

If George W. Bush wishes to be remembered in future ages -- and what high-spirited world leader doesn't? -- he will devote much of his second term to forging close and durable links with India.

Naturally, US President Bush must seek to get Continental Europe back into the Atlantic camp. With the sun of the anti-US Jacques Chirac setting and the star of the realistic and sensible Nicolas Sarkozy on the rise in France, and with the likelihood of the pro-US Angela Merkel's taking over Germany's chancellorship from the ridiculous failure that has been Gerhard Schröder's, the Continentals are already moving Bush's way.

People power

Regardless of who is in power, Europe is becoming a small player in the 21st century. The 25th International Population Conference, which met at Tours, France in July, made some significant points as to where power will be increasingly exercised in the new century.

By 2050 the European Union's 25 member nations will have a total population of only 461 million, compared with the US' 420 million. If you subtract Britain from the European total, the US population will be significantly higher.

The makeup of the European population will be older, with far fewer in the active workforce. It is more difficult to compute output per capita half a century hence, but if present trends continue, the GNP of the US will be three times that of Europe.

In contrast, by 2050 India will have the largest population in the world -- 1.6 billion inhabitants versus China's 1.4 billion, with India's population being much younger.

Although much of the Islamic world is growing fast in demographic terms -- a matter of serious import for southern Europe in particular -- India by midcentury most likely will have a greater number of souls than the entire Muslim world. As for India's economic potential, I regard that as almost infinite over the long term.

Since China threw off the horrific and destructive legacy of Mao Tse-tung's primitive Marxism, it has done remarkably well, on the whole. It has, however, tended to concentrate unduly on old smokestack industries, with the object of gaining quick returns through cheap exports.

Needless to say, this has had appalling consequences for the environment, which China will rue desperately in decades to come. China, with estimates of about 20 million convicts, is heavily dependent on slave labor, as well as on the labor of underpaid ex-peasants who are still pouring into the industrialized coastal belt.

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