Each president of the United States enters office thinking he will be able to define the agenda and set the course of America’s relations with the rest of the world. And, almost invariably, each confronts crises that are thrust upon him—wars, revolutions, genocides, and deadly confrontations.

The single greatest priority for young people in the Middle East remains living in a democratic country, according to the findings of the 2010 ASDA’A Burson-Marsteller Arab Youth Survey, the largest study of its kind of the region’s largest demographic.

DOHA --- In past sessions of the Al Jazeera Forum, held each year in the network’s Qatar hometown, reform in the Arab world was discussed with an air of resignation: “Someday…maybe.”

The sudden onset of the Arab spring and winter has reminded us yet again that America doesn't run the world. And the country must be wary, in the elegant phrasing of the late Reinhold Niebuhr, of its own dreams of managing history.

Though divided by borders, the Arab nations are linked by ancient bonds of language, ethnicity, and faith, all of them tightened by the modern technology of Twitter, Facebook, and Al Jazeera. The pro-democracy protests started in Tunisia and raced east like rows of falling dominos.

Suri said that the image of India’s foreign office has been that they’re “fuddy duddy”, and they joined Twitter and Facebook with the intent of building a positive narrative about india, development partnerships, and create Friends of India communities via facebook.”

A pervading sense of awe seems to be engulfing Arab societies. What is under way in the Arab world is greater than simply revolution in a political or economic sense. It is, in fact, shifting the very self-definition of what it means to be Arab, both individually and collectively.

On January 12, 2009, US Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs James K. Glassman joined a group of Egyptian political bloggers from the Virtual Newsroom of the American University in Cairo. Is this the “virtual” smoking gun that indicates American collusion in the subsequent ouster of Hosni Mubarak?