New thinking about the Middle East
In the wake of Hosni Mubarak’s departure, there is going to be rampant speculation on whether another Arab domino will fall. At a minimum, the fall of Mubarak has emboldened activists in neighboring countries. As fun as it is to speculate about whether and how this kind of deemocratic virus will spread. It is worth ...
In the wake of Hosni Mubarak's departure, there is going to be rampant speculation on whether another Arab domino will fall. At a minimum, the fall of Mubarak has emboldened activists in neighboring countries.
In the wake of Hosni Mubarak’s departure, there is going to be rampant speculation on whether another Arab domino will fall. At a minimum, the fall of Mubarak has emboldened activists in neighboring countries.
As fun as it is to speculate about whether and how this kind of deemocratic virus will spread. It is worth stepping back and appreciating that the region doesn’t look quite the same. Every few years or so since the third wave of deocraization, some article would try to scrape together the meager progress towards representative democracy in the Middle East and claim it was a wave. Inevitably the nascent trends would dissipate.
That could still happen, but it seems harder this time around. Looking at the Middle East now, there are established democracies in Turkey and Israel, some semblance of representative government in Lebanon and Iraq, and transitioning governments in Tunisia and Egypt. The likelihood of all of these governments reverting to strongman authoritarianism or becoming new Islamic theocracies seems highly unlikely. Already governments like Yemen, Jordan and the Palestinian authority are making concessions to get out front of new large-scale protests.
This is, to quote Vice President Biden, "a big f**king deal." It’s particularly big because this happened during a period of high oil prices, which ostensibly was a good thing for Arab autocrats.
The one thing that nags at me is whether there is a government willing to shoot its own citizens, and whether such action would halt the actual wave spreading across the Middle East.
What do you think?
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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