Contributor(s): Dr Ali Kadri | Arab countries represent stark cases of "de-development". Of the two paths of capital accumulation - accumulation by commodity realisation and accumulation by encroachment and dispossession - the Arab world falls subject to the diktat of the latter process. A tight cross-border class alliance between Western elites and Arab regimes has been at play, to support the process of social product usurpation even when the terms of trade appear to be favourable to the Arab world. The development of the Arab world is itself an outcome of a multi-tiered power structure, in the first instance, where the concept of power could be literally reduced to fire power without much loss to content and, secondly, it mediates the crisis of a fossil-fuel dependent global accumulation process. Dr Ali Kadri is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of International Development at LSE. Formerly, he served as Head of the Economic Analysis Section of the United Nations regional office in Beirut.