Daniel Korski

I'm in the Middle East, albeit in a revolution-free corner. And from the Royal Meridien hotel in Abu Dhabi it is hard to know what the region is going through. But a number of points have already come through from my conversations. First, there is an obsession about US power. The government-controlled media are busy saying that US influence is waning but every conversation focuses on what the US will or will not do. The US is clearly present ­ and although its power may be changing, it is doing so more slowly than the newspaper headlines would have you believe. The second thing is this: the Middle East will never be the same again. Even if the revolutions fail, or falter, the region is being transformed and no corner, however rich, is immune.

The government says it has a growth strategy. Speaking to the Confederation of British Industry's annual conference last October, the prime minister said his government would adopt a "forensic, relentless focus on growth" in the coming years. The strategy has three elements: creating a framework for enterprise and business investment; directing resources into areas where Britain has a competitive advantage – such as wind technology; and making it easier for new companies and innovations to flourish. But for all this and the denunciation of Gordon Brown's legacy, the coalition still seems to be reading from a core part of Labour's pre-crisis script: businesses are spoken of primarily as agents for social work.

Three months ago the future looked bleak for the West. The countries that once dominated the world, invented capitalism, articulated mankind's universal desire for freedom and defended it against all enemies looked destined for an impoverished future squeezed by the authoritarian capitalists of the East and unsure about the righteousness of its ideological foundation. Even one-time liberals, whose life has been shaped in a struggle for human rights embraced China and its state-backed progress. Now, thanks to the pro-democracy protesters in the Middle East, the West is back. Not that it backed the democratic movements and now stands to reap the benefits.

The Middle East is set for renewed displays of public anger towards the region's governments. Events in Bahrain are particularly worrying. Troops took control of the capital, killing at least four protesters in the worst violence in the Gulf kingdom in decades. The trouble in Bahrain, which houses the U.S. Navy's 5th fleet and is home to a large U.S. military base, illustrates a point Ben Judah and I make in a new article: that the three pillars of US post-World War II power in the Middle East - commercial ties, military bases and client states - are crumbling: "A new Middle East is taking shape, buffeted by Pacific trade winds and owing allegiance to more than one power.

Revolutions are exciting when they happen to other leaders. When they target the government you lead, then they become decidedly less appealing. That seems to be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's view. Only last week the Iranian President told the Egyptian protesters that they had the right to express their own opinions. The Iranian regime's short-sighted glee, however, has quickly turned to fear. And it shows: the regime has unleashed the police onto protesting crowds in Iran, killing one and wounding several. Unlike Hosni Mubarak, Iran's leaders know what it is like to be a revolutionary movement - and they have used their inside knowledge to lethal effect. Like Lenin and Stalin, they have taken revolutionary paranoia into government.

How to manage Britain's aid to India? The fast-rising country has a space programme, costing nearly the same as Britain gives in annual aid. To many people, that is reason enough to cut all aid. Yet, at the same time, India is one of the world's poorest countries. 456 million people live on less than $1.25 per day. Annual income per person is only $1,180, compared to $3,650 in China and $41,370 in the UK. That means there are 20 percent more poor people in India than in sub-Saharan Africa. But India receives only $1.50 in aid per person, compared to $28 for Sub-Saharan Africa. A good example of India's plight is Bihar province, which has population the size of Germany’s.

The world does really end with a whimper, not a bang, as T.S. Eliot said. After 31 years in power, seventeen days of protests, more than 300 dead and a shouting match between the US administration and its one-time Egyptian ally, it looks as if Hosni Mubarak will be leaving office tonight. Twitter is atwitter with news that the Egyptian strongman will soon make a TV appearance during which he is expected to hand power to newly-anointed Vice-President Omar Suleiman. Expect Tahrir Square to erupt in a festival of freedom, as the heroic, web-enabled protesters savour their unlikely but amazing victory. But while Egypt’s revolution has been more successful than many in the US and British believed it could be, it is not yet the time to celebrate.

Some attacks hurt more than others. And the attack launched by Chris Simpkins, the director-general of the Royal British Legion, on the government's approach to the military covenant will be particularly painful. For it comes after a Defence Review that left few happy, and when the nation is engaged in a war from which many feel the Prime Minister is a bit too keen to withdraw. Speaking to The Times, the Royal Legion chief said plans set out in the Armed Forces Bill requiring the Ministry of Defence to publish an annual report on the unwritten pact between society and the military were not the same as writing it into legislation - something he said the government pledged to do last June.

Foreign Secretary William Hague has arrived in Tunisia in order to support to the pro-democracy movement. Unlike his previous visit to Syria, which I think was poorly timed, this one is perfectly-timed. It could even end up looking like George Bush Snr’s visit to Poland in July 1989 when the US president publicly backed the revolutions sweeping across the European continent at the time and gave succour to the pro-democracy movements. Visits like this are so important to help the direction of travel. What people forget now is that in the Eastern Europe of 1989, the history of democracy was as limited as it is today in the Middle East. None of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria or Hungary had any experience of democracy.

The popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia have exposed as nonsense the notion, held in many quarters, that Middle Easterners - be they Arabs, Persians, Muslims and Christians - are uncommonly uninterested in democracy. But as former CIA agent and Middle East expert Reuel Marc Gerecht writes in the New York Times: 'A revulsion against the Iraq war and a distaste for President Bush helped to blind people to the spread of democratic sentiments in the region. It blinded them to the fact that among Middle Easterners, democracy, not dictatorship, was now seen as a better vehicle for economic growth and social justice. Most important, Mr. Bush's distastefulness helped to blind Westerners to the momentous marriage of Islamism and democratic ideas.