What are the prospects for an Arab state serving a leading role comparable to the role that other states place in other regions? There is no obvious candidate. Saudi Arabia has the money but a relatively small population. Iraq was a great potential leader, as a sizable country with great oil resources and a highly educated population, but it went off in the wrong direction.

Global politics remains extremely complex and countries have different interests, which will also lead them to make what might seem as rather bizarre friends and allies.

Fundamentalist tendencies and movements existed, so far as I know, in all societies and civilizations.

I think fundamentalism is this radical attitude toward one's own identity and civilization as compared to other people's identities and cultures.

It will take a long time, and certainly the West will remain the dominant civilization well into the next century, but the decline is occurring.

Also, of course, for most of this time most Americans thought of America as a white country with, at best, only a very segregated and subordinate role for blacks.

People have multiple identities.