Perhaps the best recipe for war is impoverishment. Not necessarily the kind of dirt-poor poverty everywhere in the developing world but the kind where once-rich countries see their wealth evaporate. Discontent and instability follow. The public demands change. Perhaps the greatest virtue of democracies is that they can offer peaceful change, or at least the illusion of change. In much of the Middle East, that's not the case. This photo is from the stroke of midnight in Dubai: On its own, the picture shows an unfortunate fireworks mishap in a non-oil-producing emirate. But the Burj Khalifa is a symbol of the rise of ... (full story)