Tunisia. Algeria. Egypt. Now Yemen. Soon Jordan? Is this a flash in the pan or the beginning of the end for the petro-dictatorships?
Unfortunately I have been and will continue to be extremely preoccupied with some nascent personal life changes and haven’t been able to keep up. If you have any insights then please comment.
I do have these quick feelings:
I am more optimistic that these will work than the prior demonstrations in Iran, particularly due to geopolitical differences.
The demonstrations appear to be primarily economic; all of these countries are pegged to the dollar do and have been experiencing runaway inflation for the last decade as the dollar has depreciated. Unlike China and India (which are also both starting to see some really heavy inflation) the ME countries don’t have the economies to take advantage of this through export increases and so they haven’t seen enough growth to make up for the peg.
At this point the protests seem to be a wide groundswell without much directed leadership. While this can be seen as a good thing (i.e., no Islamist leaders yet) I fear that it could also leave the countries ripe for anarchy and conflict if they do manage to bring down the ruling coalitions. As we saw in Iraq, leadership vacuums can lead to far worse conditions than even dictatorships, and I hope that there is an effort made to keep the relatively clean careerists in place even while ferreting out corruption and those at the top.