The article discusses some issues specific to the Arab East, which can have a significant impact on its further development. The Arab world has passed an eventful path from gaining political independence to the current moment, on which situations were different for each country in the region in the economic, political and many other spheres of human activity. Their multivariance reflects the diversity of the Arab East, which for decades had demonstrated different development models, but with the beginning of the new century began to lean toward a single market option for economic activity under the influence of active international and complex internal processes that led to the destruction of a number of significant countries in the region. The negative dynamics resulted in increased differentiation in the region, which is represented by three groups of countries that are strikingly different in levels of development and well-being. The ongoing Arab drama significantly expanded the range of poverty at the expense of previously relatively prosperous states, exacerbated the accumulated economic and other contradictions in the region, aggravating the historical imbalances and creating new challenges. In the mid-1970s, the Arabian monarchies sent a huge challenge to the West. The oil price revolution provoked a massive movement for energy-saving technologies, which gave the Western world a powerful impetus for the transition towards modernization based on the latest achievements in the fields in science and high technologies. The Arab world, of course, is not only turned into “itself”. It interacts with the outside world with varying degrees of intensity. But in general, without overcoming the accumulated imbalances, it will face new challenges and even threats, since it largely reproduces the previous economic models and needs an influx of modern ideas, investments, technologies and knowledge.