The huge impact of economics on global political security is a factor Asia and the Arab regions forget at their peril, says a leading Middle East consultant.
It's the economy, stupid' — James Carville's famous truism that powered Bill Clinton to the American presidency — is in reality the key to understanding the so-called Arab Spring and much else in today's unstable world.
'It's something of a misnomer that what has gone on in the Arab world has been a political process. It has, of course, had political aspects and people are seeking political outcomes but it has only come about because of economic reality,' Hagai Segal, Middle East consultant and lecturer at New York University, London told the recent Securing Asia 2012 conference in London.
'These economic issues that lead to geo-strategic ones we ignore at our peril. There are lessons here for the rest of Asia on what happens when people do not have their core economic issues addressed and they associate that lack of address with the government in question.'
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