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How long can all this last? In other parts of the world, crumbling mansions attest to the fickleness of oil wealth. A hundred years ago the city of Baku on the Caspian produced half of the world's oil supply. It was famous as a center of luxury and opulence. After a long decline under the Soviets, the capital of Azerbaijan is growing rich once again, but there is little or nothing left of the old elegance.

"You know, this is all going to end," an aide to the late ruler of Dubai, Sheik Rashid, once told me. He was an old man from the desert, and while he enjoyed being rich he mistrusted the speculative development he saw all around him. Eventually the oil would run out and the money would run out, he said. "It will be like a garden without water."

But that was 20 years ago, and there is no sign the old man's prophecy will come true any time soon. What the intervening decades have shown is that when oil states learn how to use their wealth to capitalize on their natural exoticism, whether in the placid Persian Gulf, the sunny Caribbean or the windswept North Sea coast, they are grasping the keys to long-term prosperity—if not, indeed, to paradise.

© 2008

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Member Comments

  • Posted By: wolfsrainx @ 04/30/2008 4:10:06 PM

    Enter Your CommentYoure an idiot regine. The reason these places are prospering is there all from the Gulf. The gulf area is full of the same people that backstabbed the palestinians and iraqis. They are the ones that aren't pan arabist. In fact if you look at Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, all of their royalty are ass holes who are protected by america. All the arabs not from the gulf support palestinians and actually care for people. All the Saudis and the Kuwaities and the people from the UAE care about is money and women and disobeying islam.

  • Posted By: hsunhsun @ 04/25/2008 9:27:19 AM

    dartmouth college, cornell, carnegia mellon university, uc berkeley: where to go

  • Posted By: regine @ 04/16/2008 8:36:00 AM

    why can't those rich arab helps their poor poor palestinians instead of blaming Israel for their predicaments?

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