UAE - The Regional Implications.

This, if and when isolationism takes hold, could have major implications for the Greater Middle East, in particular for countries constituting the world's biggest reservoir of petroleum. It might have major implications for the whole world as well. The trend of globalisation could be reversed; the world's oil industry and trade would become regionalised.

The global business cycle could be replaced by groups of de-synchronised economies. Flows of capital and technologies from advanced to less developed countries could be reversed. Geo-economic and geo-political alliances could change. Even the Neo-Salafi network of violent militants could be de-globalised, even de-regionalised in favour of local groups.

If Pax America changes in that direction, the Middle East and Central Asia could become more unstable, with major regional powers expanding at the expense of smaller or more unstable countries, with the smaller communities seceding from larger ones in a trend to be encouraged by Israel, Iraqi Kurdistan, the Christians of Lebanon, and perhaps also the Alawites of Syria. Sudan would be partitioned. The Arab countries of North Africa might face dismemberment threats as well.

However, isolationism in the US has always been part of cyclical change. It has often been followed by multilateralism or internationalism and, as in the case of this Bush administration, at times morphing into a Wilsonian trend.

Many elements of the current global cycle are irreversible. So American isolationism, or even European isolationism, would always be temporary even if it lasts many years.