Contrary to what the zero-sum economists of the anti-globalisation movement appear to believe, we are living through a time in which developing countries benefit from a levelling of the playing field, through lowered barriers and technological innovation which is what Friedman means by the ‘flat world’. However, as the author concedes, progress is far from universal. Even without the debilitations of disease and climate, Africa is not a continent for the cautious investor. It is still too early to say whether China’s membership of the World Trade Organisation really will mean that foreign investors are treated with the same legal courtesies as Chinese entrepreneurs. The globalised world will not be coming to India’s villages any day soon.

The Arab world remains a conspicuous failure. There is only one Arab company listed on Nasdaq. According to a 2003 UN Development Report, during the last 20 years of the 20th century, Arab countries generated a derisory 171 international patents. It is little wonder that by the mid-1990s, a quarter of the Arab world’s university graduates had emigrated to the west and to a culture in which they could succeed.

Technological availability does not, of itself, ensure liberal values. It can spread hate as well as hope. University graduates have made the most successful Islamist terrorists and many of Al-Qaeda’s operatives appear to have been recruited while they were living a disillusioned life in Europe, not the Middle East.

‘The best thing outsiders can do for the Arab-Muslim world today is try to collaborate with its progressive forces in every way possible’, says Friedman. Does this involve regime change? One astute manipulator of the Middle East believes it should and noted that in January 2004 Spain’s Gross Domestic Product was larger than that of all the Arab countries combined. He attributed this to the fact that ‘Spain is an infidel country, but its economy is stronger than our economy because the ruler there is accountable’. Such was the analysis of Osama bin Laden, proponent of an alternative vision of the flat world.

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