Summary: Noah Smith is optimistic about the future of the Middle East, noting a decline in wars and the potential for economic growth. Advances in solar power and technology could transform the region, making it a hub for green energy and industry. With favorable demographics and investments from wealthy Gulf states, the Middle East may reinvent itself in the coming decades.
Europe’s rapid rise from the ashes of centuries of division, war, and poverty provides a vivid demonstration of how a civilization’s potential is not baked into its cultural or historical DNA. Regions that seem dysfunctional are capable of rapid rises. (View Highlight)
Geography has been a curse for the Middle East for a long time. The region is basically a giant desert, with fewer water resources than anywhere else on Earth (View Highlight)
In fact, the advent of cheap solar power is just generally a huge opportunity for a sunny, dry region like the Middle East. (View Highlight)
Right now, if you want to make something electricity-intensive, you go to China, with its ultra-cheap coal power. In two decades, there’s a good chance you’ll go to the Middle East instead, with its cheap abundant solar power. (View Highlight)
There’s a well-known phenomenon in economics called the Resource Curse, where countries rich in natural resources like oil tend to grow more slowly over time. (View Highlight)
Cheap sunlight is a healthier endowment than cheap oil, because solar power is harder to monopolize by seizing control of a few oil fields. Many of the Middle East’s wars have been fought at least partially over those fields; when solar eclipses oil, one impetus for conflict will diminish greatly. (View Highlight)