America was the funder of petro-dictatorships. We treated all these countries as basically big, large gas stations: Libya station, Iraq station, Iran station, Egypt station, Syria station, and all we asked of them were three things: Keep your palms open, your prices low and don't bother Israel too much, and you can do whatever you want to your own people.
The Arab awakening has been, up to now, a lot about freedom from dictatorial regimes - Syria, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Bahrain and Egypt. But once you got freedom from, then you need freedom to. Freedom from is about destroying things. Freedom to is about constructing things, constructing the rule of law.
Syria is on the back end of basically a decade-long drought. Over the last decade, farmers and herders have been ravaged in Syria forcing them to give up and move to urban areas. This has put a huge strain on urban resources, and it's surely one of the reasons for the uprising there.
I think no country is going to be immune from the Arab awakening because the Arab awakening is driven by deep human longing for dignity, for justice and for freedom. I think that applies to young people in Saudi Arabia as much as to young people in Egypt, Tunisia, or Yemen, or Libya, or Syria. If I were in Saudi Arabia, I would be getting ahead of this and looking for ways to appreciate those aspirations and align my country with them.
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