After the Soviet Union fell, the Cold War and the tension between the two blocks in a bipolar world ended. The United States emerged as a unipolar superpower, beginning a new world order. With this, it achieved greater international influence, even in countries that had been part of the communist orbit. The presence of its huge military forces spread throughout the world and its interventions multiplied in various countries. The complex system of nuclear weapons, destined to confront those of the USSR, ceased to be a priority. But not for that reason the military resources were reduced. On the contrary, the new role of the United States, as a kind of “police of the world” caused greater military expenses, which created serious problems for the US economy. But, although the US military power was not questioned, the growth of the economies of the most advanced capitalist countries managed to become strong commercial competition. The countries of Western Europe and Japan, especially, developed cutting-edge technological productive complexes, such as aeronautics, communications or genetics, which compete successfully with Americans. On the other hand, although with the end of the Cold War it has been possible to avoid the outbreak of a world conflict, which would have unleashed a massive nuclear destruction, in the last decades there have been regionally located conflicts and even greater tensions between the Arab world and the Western countries, which have become not in a conventional war, but in harsh military interventions or terrorist actions such as the one unleashed on September 11, 2001 against New York and Washington. The United States, the countries of western Europe and Japan, remained as great capitalist powers in the twentieth century. However, in the last decades of that century within the world scene, other countries were emerging, whose economic growth has placed them in the group of powers. China, with a fifth of the world's population, still has a good proportion of the poor, but there is no longer extreme misery and is the second largest recipient of investment in the world, after the US, with very high growth rates. India has had great industrial and financial development along with accelerated integration into the global economy, although the majority of the population is in poverty. Brazil, the Latin American giant, with a huge territory, with great diversity of natural resources, including the world's largest forest reserve. Its very dynamic economy, with high internal and external investment, a growing export agriculture and an industrial and services production doubled in a few years.
