The Kristoff column I am rebutting can be found here-LINK
Mr. Kristoff- I believe you are making a sincere effort to explain the stifled socio-economic development in the Middle East and so it is with full respect that I suggest you are leaving out one major element of the formula for this circumstance in your analysis.
While the colonisation of the Middle East cannot be underestimated as a contributing factor to the stalling of social evolution in the Arab world, we must remember that as the baton of power was handed off by the major European occupying powers, to their favorite Arab 'cooperative monarchs,' the reconstruction of the Arab-Islamic social structure was met with a new and even more pernicious roadblock. Oil.
The industrial revolution in the western world was just igniting and it would run on oil and the Middle East is King Oil. So, before the Arab street could begin to plan any kind of movement for democracy the ex-European occupying powers immediately began funding their favorite monarchs with wealth beyond measure based on purchasing oil from cooperative Arab Monarchs.
This 'wealth beyond measure' has allowed Arab Monarchies (such as Saudi Arabia) to not only afford to control their people under a virtual perpetual martial law, but to also quell potential revolutionary uprisings with raw cash. As we see now, when the Arab street gets noisy, it is as easy as pie for the dictators and monarchs to simply give their citizens a years income in one day to pacify them. In that sense, since their money comes from the industrial west...the colonialism continues.
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