The Arab Spring

Abstract

The so-called Arab Spring is one of the most significant sets of events in the Arab Middle East since the end of World War Two. It is likely to unfold over several more years and feature significant realignments within and among all of the countries of the region. It will also dramatically affect relations between regional countries and extra-regional powers with interests in the Middle East.At the outset, any article that seeks to understand the situation and what it may mean must begin with recognition of the fact that the all missed the Arab Spring. Thus, explanations of why this happened and prognostications on where it might be going must be undertaken with humility. As with other momentous events, such as the end of the Cold War, experts failed to anticipate when and how the Arab Spring might happen, even though they knew something was fundamentally rotten with most regional regimes. Why was it such a surprise? To some extent, the problem has to do with the very nature of experts and of expertise. By definition, experts become deeply steeped in the nuances and intricacies of the present order. They become very good at seeing the trees but often lose sight of the forest, and particularly those events that may cause the forest to be suddenly cut down. Rapid, paradigm-shifting events are rare and one can generally, and especially if one is an expert, come up with a myriad of good reasons why they are not likely to happen at any given moment. Such expert prognostications are generally correct, but when they are not, the experts are caught flat-footed.1As one interviewee suggested, one could liken the western analysis of what has happened in the region to at least some aspects of the financial crisis. Subprime mortgages were not sustainable over the longer term; everyone knew this. But in the immediate and year-to-year term, it was in no one's interest to stop or correct the situation or even to allow information to flow to investors who might alert them to the dangers they faced. In the Middle East and north Africa, one saw much the same situation. The model of governance was going to fail at some point. The drivers were not a surprise: these have been well known for some time. Everyone has known that the combination of authoritarian regimes, the rhetoric of democracy, and a high number of relatively educated but unemployed and powerless youth is a recipe for trouble. What surprised everyone, as in the financial crisis, was the trigger for the events, the rapidity of developments, and the connections between events in one country and those in others.It was generally acknowledged by interviewees that the Arab Spring has launched a set of changes in motion that will fundamentally alter the region's course. But it is also true that one needs to take a cautious approach to predicting where this will go. There have been uprisings in the region in the past that have, at least as yet, come to little or nothing in terms of stimulating long-term systemic change. Lebanon in 2005 and Tehran in 2009 are examples. Moreover, we do not as yet know where the countries that have experienced recent change will go. In both Egypt and Tunisia, we have seen changes of the top echelons of the governing regimes, but we have not yet seen fundamental regime change in the sense of the sweeping away of the wider elites and the systems of government and economic control that they have created. Only in Libya does this seem to have happened - at least thus far. Syria remains very much in play. Just as we missed the Arab Spring, so too we must recognize that no one really knows where it is going.This article will explore three main questions: what is happening and why; who the main players are and what they want; and what the implications are for the west.WHAT IS HAPPENING AND WHY?My interviewees attempted to identify the countries that are most at risk of rapid destabilization and the reasons for this. …