To be fair a prediction of unrest in the middle east/Africa doesn't require much insight. I predict there will be unrest for the next 50 years at least.

It doesn't help there are 1st world influences mucking up the natural ecosystem there. For example, US attempting to overthrow Assad is not a natural process.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/world/middleeast/us-relies...

Leaving aside how much of your statement is true, there is no such thing as natural process in international relations.

The only concept approaching that would be social darwinism, but from that perspective it would be quite "natural".

Dude. We talking about animals here? Their natural ecosystem? People deserve more respect than that.

Ecosystem: a complex network or interconnected system.

There's hardly anything "natural" about human ecosystems, or human relationships for that matter.

Depends on your definition of natural. The religious claim of 'special creation', esp. w.r.t. humans has it easy here:

> existing in nature and not made or caused by people : coming from nature

This definition really stems from man's early assumption that we are distinctly "different" from all other natural things.

But reality tells us otherwise: People are a part of nature; they are natural. It's easier to discuss in terms of what isn't the same instead of what is the same. And that is, we are the smartest known species (being the sole species with self-consciousness is still up for debate). Therefore everything people do is natural.

So either everything humans do is natural or nothing humans do is natural. Either way, it's incorrect to say that 1st world actions in the Middle East are any more "unnatural" than what the indigenous people do.

That was kinda my point. As long as they're being okay neighbors and keeping the human rights violations in line, IMHO countries deserve self determination without the superpowers bullying via overthrowing (Assad)--or just plain invading (eg Ukraine).

That's a reasonable point (although it's not like Assad is short on human rights violations), but implying there's some sort of "natural line of development" that would have happened without interaction with the west really strikes me as (unintentionally) racist.

No, I was making an obtuse reference to non-interference. Perhaps a poor metaphor.

For those who don't know Walid Phares was a high ranking political official in a Christian religious militia responsible for civilian massacres during Lebanon's civil war. Now he's a favorite Islam "scholar" for right-wing reactionaries in the U.S.

He may be a demagogue. But is his analysis wrong?