Göran Persson, Sweden’s prime minister from 1996 to 2006, coined the expression, “Those who are in debt are not free”. At that time he was talking about the nation’s debt levels but the expression can be applied more widely to also include oil. When unrest and calls for democracy began in Tunisia we saw the world’s democracies fairly quickly support those calls. They could do it because Tunisia is not a key nation in terms of oil exports of oil. As the calls for democracy spread farther in the Middle East to include Egypt it became progressively more difficult for the democracies to back the calls.
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