Could Saddam Hussein’s armed forces have sunk a U.S. Navy battleship? That might seem like a question destined to launch an excursion into alt-history, but it was far from hypothetical to the 3,200 or so crewmen of the battleships USS Wisconsin and Missouri who squared off against Iraq in 1991. It was daily life, especially when they closed with hostile shorelines to render naval gunfire support to forces ashore—and thus came within striking reach of Iraqi defenses. My answer: yes.

Turkey is a country of paradoxes. Ankara has been a NATO member since 1952 but is about to receive the S-400 air defense system from the transatlantic alliance’s main adversary, Russia, and consequently face sanctions from its longtime ally, the United States. Ankara has been undertaking accession negotiations with the European Union since 2005, but Turkish officials happen to be deeply Eurosceptic, frequently hurling insults at their European counterparts and targeting Western values.

The last ten years have seen forms of political disruption within Egypt that were virtually unimaginable a decade ago—from the 2011 protest uprisings; the 2012 election of Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi to the Egyptian presidency; the 2013 coup d’état which unseated Morsi; and the 2014 formal assumption of power by current Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt has witnessed a period of staggering political change. Few analysts would disagree with the statement that demographic circumstances and technological developments played a crucial role in sparking and sustaining the popular movement that set this chain of events into motion.

There are two lenses by which to view the political potential of Saudi Arabia’s large, tech-savvy youth generation. The first, optimistic perspective holds that given their social awareness, technological skillset, and creative potential, the Kingdom’s millions of young citizens will be the engine for constructive progress. That progress is defined by post-oil economic transformation, and hence renewed political stability and national unity under the House of Saud. This is the image invoked by Saudi Arabia’s grandiose Vision 2030 initiative, as well as its architect, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.