NewsWatch: 2006: Middle East

[Narrator:] From the University of California at Davis, this is NewsWatch.

[Paul Pfotenhauer:] Keith Watenpaugh, an expert in the history of the Middle East, was signing his book and talking to the UC Davis campus community about the challenges facing middle class Arabs.

[Keith Watenpaugh:] Continually the middle class tries to build stuff up. But it's never strong enough to actually take over and dominate their own societies.

[Paul Pfotenhauer:] In his book, "Being Modern in the Middle East," Watenpaugh writes about the rise of a middle class of liberal professionals. So what's the future of the middle class in the Middle East?

[Keith Watenpaugh:] Well it's pretty bleak. I think it's pretty bleak. The overwhelming problem is the economic erosion of their middle class status. But also the fact that they often live in countries where corruption is endemic, where preference is given to the children of the elite, where merit isn't recognized, and where it's who you know that's most important. So the middle class of the Middle East, I think, is in, really in danger of disappearing entirely.

[Paul Pfotenhauer:] Watenpaugh says the United States should focus its efforts on how to improve life for the middle class. If the middle class breaks apart, it citizens emigrate.

[Keith Watenpaugh:] This will be the positive engine for social change. And in many regards trying to do something about the authoritarian nature of some our chief allies in the region -- like Egypt or Saudi Arabia, I think would go a long way in creating a kind of breathing space for the middle class to more fully evolve in the region.

[Paul Pfotenhauer:] He thinks that in the future, Egypt, Turkey and even Iran could sustain a robust middle class. Reporting from UC Davis, I'm Paul Pfotenhauer.