Lawrence G. Potter

In the following viewpoint, Lawrence G. Potter argues that financial profits from oil and natural gas reserves have led to conflict in the Middle East. Western nations have sometimes interfered with Middle Eastern politics to procure oil assets, Potter points out. Furthermore, oil revenues enabled Persian Gulf countries to modernize rapidly, which destabilized the region’s traditional cultures and value systems. After the discovery of oil, monarchs and ruling sheikhs provided financial security to citizens and to religious institutions in return for their political loyalty. Presently, however, the region’s population is increasing while oil revenues are remaining stable. Faced with burgeoning unemployment and decreasing economic benefits, many people in the Gulf are demanding greater say in government while maintaining potentially divisive ethnic and religious loyalties. Potter is a professor of...