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On NPR this morning, author Vali Nasr talked with the host Steve Inskeep about the approach used during the colonial era to export Western ideas to the East. He illustrated with the story of his father, who was sent to Paris, where he was taught medicine, and Western manners, and who returned to Iran and struggled all his life to create hospitals and train physicians to improve health care in Iran. All that, of course, was washed away in the revolution of 1979.Today, says Nasr, that approach is doomed. It is no longer possible to convert a small elite to Western ideas, and hope that they, in turn, can influence their people to move towards Western ideals. (The reasons are many, and perhaps my readers can see what they might be themselves, without help from Mr Nasr! Among other things, the Middle East appears to have learned one unintended lesson from the West: the suspicion of all elites.)
On the other hand, Nasr points out, a middle-class is emerging which, even if it is unswayed by Western morals and values, is eager for profits, and for access to Western markets. Most of all, he adds, this middle-class is peace loving. (Peace is good for business, unless you're an arms manufacturer!)
He concluded that though the colonial instruments of morals and values and ideology come up against impenetrable barriers today, good old market expansion and profit margins may provide better common ground. (It seems to me that, for too long the West has been saying: well, don't you worry about profits; what you need is human rights, etc etc.)
Mr Nasr's view is ultimately a cynical one, but it seems plausible that the emerging middle class in the Middle East can divorce business from morals and ideology as successfully as has the middle class in the West.
Archimedes
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