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RT: Julian, thank you for talking to RT. Now, through the course of your work, you have some insight into the way that political decisions are made throughout the world. What do you make of the recent developments in the Middle East and North Africa at the moment? Do you think that we are seeing genuine social unrest or are we seeing some kind of orchestrated revolt and if so, who do you think is behind all this?

JA: There is genuine change in some parts of the Middle East. I mean Egypt is a clear case. I was concerned at the beginning over the Egyptian revolution: whether we just saw a changing of the chairs and the maintenance of the same existing power structure, or whether something was really happening.

But after Mubarak fled Cairo, you saw mini-revolutions occurring in every institution within Egypt, from Alexandria to Cairo. So, that’s the sort of change that’s hard to undo.

What’s happening in some other countries is a bit different. The situation in Libya clearly has an involvement of state actors in it from many different areas. That’s something that has been driven by state actors. Now, it is normal for neighboring countries to have interconnections with each other: the activists in different countries, families in different countries, businesses in different countries, and the states from neighboring countries. That’s normal.

When outside forces fr... >>>