London's anti-war protesters should realize that the "Big Six" are discovering peace.

Jonathan Power Columnist London

The micro picture is disturbing. Not since Vietnam have America and its allies seemed so bogged down in wars that are not going well. There is much to protest about.

Yet paradoxically the big picture is remarkably good -- a state of affairs the anti-Bush protesters in London appear to overlook. Not since 1870-1913 have the big powers been so at peace with each other. Moreover, the present peace is built more securely than was the balance of power that kept the peace for most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (Peace also reigned between 1815 and 1854.)

Today's big powers -- the U.S., the European Union, Russia, Japan, China, and we should add India, appear to have no major quarrel with each other, no outstanding major issues (apart from the future of Taiwan which is now being handled remarkably amicably) that could bring them to war.

All six exhibit most of the time an urge to keep the likelihood of conflict serious enough that it might lead to saber rattling and then to war right upstairs in the attic along with the folios of old quarrels that have now been either made up or simply become anachronistic.

Perhaps we do have to thank George Bush for at least some of this achievement. He has made Russia much more a partner of U.S. foreign policy than any predecessor since Roosevelt. He has managed to keep the period of bitter estrangement with the anti- Iraq war faction of European countries down to a matter of a few months; on most issues differences are argued over in a civilized manner.

With Japan relations have long been good in their essentials, despite the tensions that have developed from Japan's economic crisis. With India Bush has worked hard to end India's reflex anti-Americanism and has not sought, in return for America's new friendliness, to demand that New Delhi step back from its long relationship with Moscow.

But the biggest change of all has been the relationship with China. Since China has improved its external rapport on every front with all five of the other big powers perhaps this has something to do with changes in China rather than some feat of American diplomacy. But it would be churlish to belittle Bush's achievement since he has clearly been more than ready to reciprocate China's steps towards amicability.

China over the last decade has made significant changes in its foreign policy. Since 1991 China has settled border conflicts with Russia, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Laos. With India China has worked to sharply to reduce tensions on their disputed border. At the UN, from the mid 1990s on, China has moved away from simply abstaining on Chapter 7 resolutions in the Security Council.

In November 2002 it even voted for Resolution 1441 on weapons inspections in Iraq. On the issue of North Korea's nuclear weapons, which if left untended could provoke the U.S. into a high risk policy of direct confrontation and Japan into developing nuclear weapons, it has moved recently to become the key figure in resolving the present stand-off.

Even with Taiwan, where it continues to exhibit nervousness over the island's efforts to maintain its independence, it seems to have taken a big step backwards from its threatening "missile tests" in 1965 and 1966. Today China acts in a more tolerant manner and is concentrating more on the mutually beneficial economic relationship and less on the divisive political issues.

This big picture harmony, singular in itself, is all the more an achievement given the intensity of today's ongoing conflicts between Palestine and Israel, in Iraq and Afghanistan and possibly between India and Pakistan, not to mention the continuing African wars. Superficially it might seem that the closing of the ranks of the "big six" has something to do with al-Qaeda and Sept. 11.

It has certainly helped -- and that makes it all but certain that in time both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein will be captured -- but the root causes of this amazing rapprochement go deeper than that.

One could hazard that is has something to do with the peaceful way Mikhail Gorbachev brought an end to the Cold War and that it owes a lot to the much derided fast pace of economic globalization that has intertwined economies like never before. Even that cannot explain it all.

Surely it has much to do with the rapid spread of democratization and a respect for human rights. Even China is becoming more open. Add to that the way the explosion of the internet has broken down borders and spread both ideas and culture, one of which is a growing impulse by democratic electorates to avoid war whenever possible. And, if we are honest, it owes something to Bush's steady hand on some, if not all, of the major issues of U.S. foreign policy.

Do our politicians realize what is happening? And can they build on it? They must.