As an Indian, my response would be yes and no. The problem I find with this argument is that it treats an entire country as one unit thinking the same way - “us and them”. While I’ve not been to Saudi Arabia, I can tell you from my own experiences here that a country’s people are a lot more complicated than most portrayals in the west make them out to be.

Yes, companies and corporations can bring in cultural shifts that many locals find damaging but other cultures (please note the plural) also bring in exposure to how the rest of the world lives. This is important because such exposure offers locals a window into their own lives. For example, many Indians' attitudes towards LGBTs have softened in the last decade and part (though not all) of that reason is exposure to other parts of the world, particularly the west. Of course, it’s telling that antagonism towards LGBTs is caused largely from a British colonial hangover from the 19th Century, but that’s just my point —there are both positives and negatives to other cultures and attitudes coming into a country.

People in any country are heterogeneous —some will be more open to cultures and attitudes from other parts of the world, others not so much. Some may welcome certain aspects of western thought while rejecting others. I myself do this —I campaigned against the Facebook free basics offering mentioned in this post while acknowledging the important impacts that social media like FB, Twitter and Whatsapp have brought to India. Everybody tries to find a level of engagement that works for them.

Therefore, both “leave them alone” and “let’s push this upon them” are terrible ideas. What’s needed is a respectful engagement between cultures, an engagement that seeks to understand what works and what doesn’t and for whom. Studies like the one mentioned here are good steps in that regard.