Where there is prosperity conflict has a nasty habit of following. From the tumult of the Andalusian era in the 12th century to the present day, success has spawned evil as well as creating good.
In recent Middle East history, the supreme example has been Lebanon. It had long been the gateway to the East but in the 20th century it also became the West’s portal to the Arab world and its oil. With this prosperity, it developed into an extremely potent regional hub for education, health, tourism and real estate. However, it was a boom that also created consternation among Lebanon’s neighbors, who coveted and ultimately fought over its riches. Lebanon suffered for its success.
All that is gone. Not only because the Lebanese allowed their country to be subsumed by war, but also because Lebanon has failed to react to the shift in currents in the global economy. The direction of today’s goods and services has changed and the fight over Lebanon is no longer predicated on old trade routes. China and India — the emerging industrial giants — are now feverishly seeking a gateway to the lucrative markets of the West, but today that gateway is the Gulf.
Dubai epitomizes this new breed of hub that encapsulates all the nations of the Gulf from Qatar to Muscat. They are the new gateway of the new industrial world. The current oil boom has only just started and if the initial private equity signals are anything to go by, the Gulf nations will experience a similar situation to that of Lebanon. In fact, it has already started. Just as the West established in the early 20th century the education cornerstones of Beirut, the great names in learning and culture are today also setting up shop, coming on the back of equally robust real estate and tourism developments. But unlike that period, today, as Gulf institutions voraciously acquire global banks and corporations, it is the East that is now calling the shots.
But with the dawn of a new era comes a word of caution: These new hubs must nurture this new economic and cultural development and not make the same mistakes Lebanon made. They have a responsibility to protect what is in effect a global gateway, work on security and seek to be on good terms with all nations. In such a volatile part of the world, these new and potentially exciting economic currents can easily be manipulated as catalysts for divergence.
Conflict must not be allowed to become the fatal by-product of success.
