Forecasting the Arab Spring

Abstract

S the December 2010 flight of Tunisian strongman Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali amid demonstrations calling for the “fall of the regime,” and the inspired uprisings among Egyptians, Libyans, Syrians, and others, Western analysts have spilled a wealth of ink interpreting the events of the so-called “Arab Spring.” Initially, skepticism reigned regarding the prospects for further prodemocracy revolts to follow Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution. Even as the final days approached for the regime of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, seasoned observers held firmly that political change in Cairo would not come overnight. “Game over,” declared one authority on modern Egypt in early February 2011, affirming that Mubarak had “outsmarted the opposition” and concluding that “the chance for democracy in Egypt is lost.”1 Nine days later, Mubarak was gone. At first, this cautious take on the Arab Spring’s potential appeared reasonable, especially given the past half-century of modern Arab history. Not since the 1950s had the Arab states, in the form of the radical Arab nationalism inspired by then Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, experienced revolutionary turmoil on a massive scale.2 Since that time, autocracy had, it seemed, planted deep roots in the Arab world. Many experts therefore predicted that the unrest would be quickly squelched—brutally and decisively—as Iran’s prodemocracy Green Movement was after June 2009. Looking back in September 2011, one easily recognizes that the autocrats’ staying power was taken for granted and that the democratic urgings of the Arabs, grown irrepressible, were overlooked. There is at least one scholar, however, who may claim some noteworthy exemption from these oversights. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, completed The Wave: Man, God, and the Ballot Box in the Middle East in October 2010, a mere two months before the onset of the Arab Spring. Arguing that the Middle East was on the cusp of a democratic transformation, his book focused on how the emergent democratic order would be heavily infused, at least initially, with an unsavory political Islam. Yet despite his very hard-nosed and unsympathetic appreciation of the Islamic fundamentalism he predicted would play a leading role, Gerecht still holds great hope for the