These have included trends that events far from the region, whether in the US or Europe, have imposed on the Arab world. There were trends that emerged from the accumulations of policies and practices in the Arab world’s experience in the second half of the 20th century since the retreat of colonialism. And there were trends, such as those in the wake of the Arab uprisings 15 years ago, that reflected the frustrations and aspirations of new generations of Arabs that have not experienced the decades since the emergence from colonialism and yet whose lives have been shaped by their legacies.
The interaction of these trends has given rise to different predicaments. The first is that geopolitics, whether of the world or of the region, have entangled many countries in the Arab world and in the wider Middle East in circumstances and situations that force them to interact with each other, often in confrontation, often in cooperation, and more often than not, in competition.
These interactions, and especially the competition, tend to be part of the region’s geoeconomics. The result is interactions that are reminiscent of those of the families in the novels of Dostoyevsky: the protagonists are bound together by inextricable links, while most try to maximise their interests at the expense of others. Polarisations abound, raw feelings fill the air, and crimes often occur.
These interactions have also given rise to different mindsets. As this series has also tried to show, some of the players in the Arab world and the wider Middle East have leveraged favourable economic conditions for the acquisition and development of high-end technologies, and with the good management of their natural and financial and human resources have situated themselves in advanced and virtuous international economic circles.
A few of the regional players have taken notable steps that have positioned them as favoured regional partners of other powerful and affluent economic players, which has given them new opportunities to evolve their positioning in the global economic pecking order. The rest of the countries in the region, however, remain mired in structural economic, and often political-economy, traps such that their chances of effecting a serious improvement in their status in the international economic order and significant improvements in the living standards of their societies are minimal.
This leads us to a second predicament. Many of the countries in the Arab world and the wider region have some strategic value such that they are either too big to fail, or that their falling into chaos would have spillover effects on their rich neighbours. These countries almost by default end up being either economic liabilities for the richer neighbours or satellites in regional economic networks in which they provide land or resources as infrastructure or industrial inputs.
But because these countries’ social and political situations are highly problematic and increasingly very different from those of their richer neighbours, the cultural gaps between them widen.
This creates the third predicament that this series has tried to point to in previous articles. That is that the future prospects of the Arab world, and of the wider Middle East as a whole, are increasingly very different. As a result, there is a possible scenario in which the notion of Arabness becomes merely cultural with few social manifestations and with hardly any serious political dimensions.
If this scenario materialises, the Arab world and the wider Middle East will effectively become four geoeconomic blocks. One of these will be the Maghreb region, whose eyes are focused on the northern shores of the Mediterranean and that often tries to be a bridge between Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa.
A second will be the Arabian Peninsula, most of whose countries are increasingly linked to international economic value chains, but whose security is a function of variables detached from the rest of the Arab world. A third will be the Eastern Mediterranean, most of whose countries will try to attach themselves to the Arabian Peninsula’s geoeconomic interests. And a fourth will be largely anchored on Egypt with its structural economic and political-economy circumstances.
The future is never determined in advance, however. There is always agency in history. These predicaments are neither destinies nor archetypes with major sways over collective psyches. The countries of the Arab world and of the wider region can alter the dynamics that have shaped their predicaments.
This will need courage and imagination, however, together with a sense of goodness that makes strategies and policies more than short-term transactions – a mixture of which the Arab world and the wider Middle East has largely been deficient.
The writer is the author of Islamism: A History of Political Islam (2017) and Egypt on the Brink (2010).
* A version of this article appears in print in the 11 December, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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