The first place you feel the impact of the global economic recession in Dubai is in taxi rides and car journeys that take much less time than they used to, due to reduced traffic congestion.

This and other superficial measures of economic conditions offer insights into the current state of affairs in the United Arab Emirates and the Gulf region, but the more interesting issues remain largely unexplored in public. These longer-term issues that will determine the fate of the Arab world in the decades ahead relate less to material conditions - how crowded are the malls, how much have real estate prices declined - and more to whether the Arab world will use the...