Middle East's Future: Terror or Progress?

Three decades ago, Middle Easterners fixed the blame for all their problems on the US, Europe and Israel. How much has really changed?

I'm at a conference in Beirut Lebanon this week that brings together Western analysts and people associated with various subsets of political Islam, both peaceful and not so peaceful. The conference is governed by Chatham House rules: no identification of attendees and no direct quotation of what is said.

But I don’t think I'm violating any confidences if I reproduce here something I said myself during our day's talk.

At one point the conference turned to the question, how large are the changes now occurring in the greater Middle East? There are many ways to answer the question, but when it was my turn, I decided to answer candidly rather than politely. I suggested this:

For all the political and religious upheaval, all the strategic and demographic change that has come to the region over the past three decades or so it is the continuities that are more striking than the changes.

* Three decades ago, the once moderately affluent Middle East was falling further and further behind a more dynamic East Asia. Today, the Middle East has fallen even further behind East Asia.

* Three decades ago, the Middle East produced little for international markets other than natural resources. Today, the situation has not much improved.

* Three decades ago, the economic failings of Middle Eastern countries drove their people to emigrate in large numbers outside the region. Truer than ever.

* Three decades ago, the region produced little of international interest in the arts, humanities or sciences. In the arts, that statement is now perhaps somewhat less true, but otherwise it continues. Of course, the region does now do a lively export business in the more extreme forms of religious observance.

* Three decades ago, the region was dominated by repressive governments and opposition movements that were often even worse: more violent, more theocratic, more repressive in their intentions than the status quo governments. Check.

* Three decades ago, Middle Easterners fixed the blame for all their problems on the United States, Europe and Israel. Today they often omit Europe from the list, but again: check.

Or am I missing something?