Storm Clouds.(what the world will look like in 2012)(Middle East)(Brief Article)

When western diplomats in the Middle East talk among themselves, many compare the present moment to August 1914. Then, Europe was stumbling toward a cataclysm. So reckless was the rhetoric that a single terrorist act, an assassination in Sarajevo, would unleash the first world war. "There is a moment," says a U.S. State Department veteran, "when people are going about their daily lives, thinking things are bad but they'll get by. And then, from the morning to the afternoon, everything has changed and nothing will ever be the same." Ten years from now, the summer of 2002 may well be remembered as just such a moment for the Muslim world. Here's how the story will read:

The U.S. war on Iraq was short. The dictator Saddam Hussein fell more quickly than expected. The aftermath was far worse. After the United States pulled out, Iraq quickly splintered along ethnic and religious lines: Kurds in the north, Shiites in the south, a Sunni majority in between. Saudi Arabia followed, as the oil-rich east and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the west broke away from the reign of Riyadh in the center. The fall of the House of Saud was disastrous, ending decades of quiet partnership between Riyadh and Washington that had assured the world of a steady flow of affordable oil.

The Middle East went topsy-turvy. Pro-American regimes were left at odds with their people, undermined by radicals preaching a new Pan- Islamic nationalism. By 2010 Al Qaeda was a name out of ancient history, but the new radical groups operating out of Africa, Europe and even the United States had U.S. policymakers nostalgic for Osama bin Laden.

There were precedents. Israel's 1967 defeat of the Arab armies--in just six days--shook just about every Arab regime to its foundations and soon brought to power some of the ...