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Respect is the new paradigm in relation to the Middle East

Let it not be said that the world isn't changing.....and fast to boot!     The West, notably America propped up dictators by pouring millions of dollars into their coffers, yet stood aside as any democratic rights and principles for the leader's country-folk were trashed.   Now, the wheel has turned in the Middle East with the Arab Spring having seen an awakening of people-power.    Time for the West to re-calibrate, as Paul McGeough writes in "West must learn to respect wishes of new Arab leaders" in The Sydney Morning Herald.  

"Something truly remarkable unfolded in New York this week - the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya came to the green-marbled dais at the United Nations as genuine representatives of their people.

For too long, autocratic predecessors in the first three had come to town as puppets of the West. Utterly unembarrassed, they would collect cheques, in return for paying lip-service to the rights and dignity of their people, before adjourning to backrooms to do deals more in the service of foreign capitals. The fourth, Libya, was long a pariah - until Colonel Gaddafi saw commercial gain in coming in from the cold.

The context for this week's speeches was remarkable too.

Instead of arriving only for another round of hand-wringing on the conflict in Syria and Israel's demands for a pre-emptive strike against Iran, these new Arab leaders strode to the lectern with heartfelt expressions of their peoples' hurt and frustration over a crude blasphemy of the Prophet Muhammad, in the form of a video devised and produced in distant California - but served up in villages and cities across the Islamic world by the marvels-without-borders that are the instant news and social media of our time.

Western leaders and commentators were quick to frame management of the protests as a test of the leadership skills of the new headmen in the Middle East. They were right - but only up to a point.

The greater test is for the West. After decades of happily making the rights and aspirations of ordinary Arabs subservient to global demands for energy and ''stability'', which the likes of Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, clung to until minutes before last year's collapse of the Mubarak regime, the West now needs to be more respectful of the demands of the Arab masses as expressed by their newly accountable leaders."


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