21st century

The 21st century is the current century in the Anno Domini or Common Era, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. It began on 1 January 2001 (MMI), and will end on 31 December 2100 (MMC). It is the first century of the 3rd millennium.

The rise of a global economy and Third World consumerism marked the beginning of the century, along with increased private enterprise and deepening concern over terrorism after the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001. The NATO intervention in Afghanistan and the United States-led coalition intervention in Iraq in the early 2000s, as well as the overthrow of several regimes during the Arab Spring in the early 2010s, led to mixed outcomes in the Arab world, resulting in several civil wars and political instability. Beginning in early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic began to rapidly spread worldwide, causing more than seven million reported deaths and up to 33.5 million estimated deaths, and severe global economic disruption including the largest global recession since the Great Depression in the 1930s. The pandemic defined 2020 and 2021 and remained a global health crisis until mid-2023. The early 2020s saw an increase in wars across the world, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Gaza war, and 2026 Iran war. The war on drugs has continued, with the focus primarily on Mexico and the rest of Latin America. The United States is generally considered to have remained the sole global superpower in the 2000s and 2010s, but by the 2020s, China has increasingly been labeled as a superpower due to its influence in geopolitics, technology, manufacturing, economics, and culture, along with the United States' own decline that began in the 2010s.