On "Arab unrest" in Esquire's "Answer Fella" column

August 2011 issue, the question being:

Are all these uprisings in Muslim countries a good or bad thing?

Response starts with bit from Fareed Zakaria and then Hani Bawardi, a U Michigan assistant prof, then turns to me (based on phone interview I gave A.J. Jacobs a while back.

As for the bumpy road ahead, take it from the Rihanna of realpolitik, Esquire's own Thomas P.M. Barnett, perhaps the planet's wisest geostrategist: "It's like passing a kidney stone: It's going to be a painful process, but the sooner you start, the sooner you get it over with. I don't think it damages the U.S. interests at all; that's just a lot of stale assumptions. Would you rather solve the problem or continue with the difficulty? This incentivizes a lot more people to get off their asses and get a lot more involved.

(The "P.M.," by the way, is Tom's homage to the late, great Pigmeat Markham.)

Clearly, Jacobs took the most visceral bit, but I stick with my larger point: nobody is happy with the status quo in the Arab world, even as we got used to our dictators and Israel preferred their stable cohort of regional enemies (and yes, everybody would rather fight than switch, as the old cig advertisement goes).  We all know it has to change and we've all complained toward that end.  But now that we have something big in motion, we fret about losing our "stable" past (much like we idiotically pined for the "stability" of the Cold War). Sure, it will be messy and it will seem like we're "losing," but better to process the pain and get that stone out!

All the expert analysis of how this is turning against America is premature nonsense, like calling the game on the first play from scrimmage.  Think Zhou Enlai talking about the French Revolution and simply relax.  Getting all sphincter-like in the early going blinds us to the real flexibility we have here, as does the equally idiotic finger-pointing.

The pathways here are clear: either the Middle East opens up and that connectivity serves our interests, or it closes off and the world is forced to rethink its dependency on the region's resources.  Either way is good for us. The only variables are pain level and time, but progress is assured for the system as a whole.

Same can be said for Libya and Syria: more short-term pain the better.  Whatever emerges, no matter how long it takes, will either open those countries up (good for us) or shut them down severely (also good if the bad leadership remains).  All the junk about US "standing" and "interests" (almost always a bullshit term) is meaningless.  Think global and long term.  We are winning.  Our exception continues to become the norm. Nobody else leads this process like we do.

All the rest is the usual name-calling.  Go volunteer at a charity if you want everybody to like you.