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The big question, now and in the future, is just what the Arabs are going to do with their new-found riches. A few still buy the traditional perks—air-conditioned Cadillacs, swimming pools and girls—but others have hired squads of advisers, ranging from ex-British civil servants to Palestinian refugees, to help them build roads, hospitals, housing projects, and to invest their money in Western enterprises for maximum profit. The Kuwaitis still seem to favor foreign real estate—from a new high-rise Holiday Inn in Beirut to a $27 million chunk of the Champs-Elysées, where a palatial House of Kuwait is to be built. The Saudis are determined to build or buy their own "downstream" facilities—which, in the language of the oilmen, means oil refineries and even chains of service stations in Western Europe and the U.S. They also have plans for an ambitious program of industrialization at home. And they emphasize that they would welcome U.S. participation. Minister Yamani, in fact, envisions an economic partnership between the U.S. and the Arab states so strong that it might eventually alter U.S. foreign policy on the Middle East. "If you have close economic relations," he told TIME Correspondent Spencer Davidson last week, "you can rely on each other. It is much better than fighting and confrontation."
Such a view contrasts sharply with that of the militant Gaddafi, whose tastes are spartan and anti-imperialist. The son of a nomadic horse and camel trader, he lived in a tent throughout his childhood. With the help of a tutor, he studied at night by the light of an oil lamp, and he remains fiercely proud that he skipped several grades after entering school. He traces his political consciousness to the late 1950s. "Everything was happening," he says. "Arab nationalism was exploding. The Suez Canal had been nationalized by the Egyptians in 1956; Algeria was fighting for its independence. The monarchy had been overthrown in Iraq. In Libya, nothing was happening. We had only a simple old King, a fool of a crown prince and a corrupt government."
Once, he recalls, he organized his fellow high school students and led a demonstration for Nasser. "I went around to all the different merchants for cloth for the flags and banners and wrote slogans on all the walls. I always dressed in Bedouin robes with my face covered, so that when the police came looking for me, they would always be told that I was just another nomad."
Rebels. He went on to Libya's military academy, where he gradually won over his classmates to the cause of revolution—and each class revolutionized its successors. Says Gaddafi: "We decided that we could make the revolution when we got half the officers in the Libyan army. By 1969 we had them." The opportunity came on the night of Sept. 1, as the army officers were playing host to the senior officers of the national police, who were loyal to King Idris. As the evening drew to a close, the young officers simply arrested their guests. The 80-year-old King was out of the country as usual, and the crown prince slept through two raids on the palace. By 7 a.m., the rebels held Tripoli, and Muammar Gaddafi was Libya's new head of state and commander in chief.