Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

OP-ED: "The Real 'New Middle East'", by Afshin Molavi, Washington Post, 20 August 2006.

Tipped to me by development vet Doug Clark.

Great piece. Check out the opening para:

Last month, as images of war and carnage in Lebanon filled Arab airwaves, more than 10 million Saudis joined together for a common goal. A massive political protest? No. A petition calling for an end to the fighting? Not that either. A boycott of American goods? No. So, what did 10 million Saudis -- more than half the adult population -- do? They bought stock.

For 10 days Saudis rushed feverishly for a piece of the kingdom's most ambitious development project ever: a $27 billion city that will create a seaport, an industrial district, a financial center, an education and health-care zone, resorts, and a residential area. The kingdom is no stranger to massive infrastructure projects, but there's an interesting twist here: The government won't be financing this one; that task will be up to wealthy Saudi investors, public share offerings and a high-flying Dubai-based property company.

Gives you some perspective, does it not?

Not only is the world not going to hell in a handbasket, the Persian Gulf isn't.

Also:

When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the Lebanon war was a sign of the "birth pangs of a new Middle East," she was both dramatically wrong and partially right. A "new Middle East" is indeed being born, but it has little to do with Lebanon or President Bush's democracy agenda. The "new Middle East" is forming in the boardrooms of new and innovative businesses, in assertive private sectors demanding reform, in booming equity markets, cash-rich banks, state-owned investment houses and individual investors with global outlooks, and in a new generation of entrepreneurs and businessmen (and women) creating real companies with real underlying values.

I agree with this and I disagree with this (much like the author with Rice): Bush's Big Bang is speeding up the killing, but yeah, the dominant driver here is the region both taking advantage of the huge uptick in globalization recently (all that Asian demand for energy translating into profits) and trying to adapt itself to this historical process' inevitable absorption of the region on an economic, then social, then political basis.

This is the larger world that the Robbs and the 4GW types in general are missing out on.

And yeah, demographics plays a big role: that youth bulge working it's way through the region right now both fuels the dreams of the jihadists bent on disconnecting the region from the world and the feverish efforts of the globalizers who realize that integration with the global economy is the only way to generate all the required jobs to process that bulge.

Like I say in BFA, the race is on and the game clock is largely defined by demographics.