Phyllis Bennis, a specialist in U.S. foreign policies, stuck with the idea of transition in her lecture given in the Great Hall at the Memorial Union on Thursday.

Bennis’ lecture, titled “Democracy Movement in the Middle East: How Can We Help?” focused as much on the current Occupy Movement here in the United States as it did on foreign protests.

“I think what we’re looking at it as a shaking up of politics around the world,” said Bennis, who is a fellow at the Transnational Institute as well as at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. “People are saying, ‘There’s something wrong.'”

Bennis discussed how relations between Middle Eastern countries come from a country’s size, oil control and the amount of water found in the area. The more a country has of each, the more regional power they possess. This can lead to tensions between countries, as well as within a country between its citizens and the controlling government.

Many youth in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt and other countries that have seen major movements toward a change in government have youth that worked hard to gain an education only to find that getting a job is impossible with economies that are plagued with outlying factors, such as the arms race.

“In no case in these countries were the people able to be actors in their own countries … not without the help of the U.S,” Bennis said, who continued on to explain that the U.S. is careful to understand the role of regional powers in each area before offering aid to an uprising toward a foreign governmental change.

However, Bennis also said that the offering of aid to such an uprising “has far less to do with the nature of the government or the nature of the uprising … but the relationship of our government to that country.”

That “relationship” Bennis referred to surrounds an always-prominent issue in our country, the control of foreign oil. The theory is that the U.S. gives more foreign aid to uprising foreign citizens if they are of a government that we are not strong allies with and does not control a sizable amount of foreign oil. If a foreign country is in fact a strong ally and a vast number of oil fields, it is more likely that the U.S. will not be as willing to help those citizens in a democracy movement.

For Bennis, this unequal share of given aid can have a major effect on how people in the Middle East view our country. “They don’t hate our freedoms. They hate our policies that deny them their freedoms,” she said.

James Postal, junior in history, attended the lecture for his political science class. “I thought that [Bennis] really knew what she was talking about … this is the perfect place to get that information out,” he said.

Bennis believes that, for now, the United States needs to stay closer to home and work on its own internal issues. “We have a very big job to do, to change how our government operates … it’s time to allow us to reclaim our own democracy.”