The notable features of the so-called Arab Spring have been its suddenness, its intensity and its awesome and altogether unforeseen outcomes; three well-entrenched and seemingly secure regimes – Egypt, Tunisia and Libya – toppled in a matter of months, almost entirely – save to a considerable extent in the case of Libya – without external intervention on tides of popular domestic protest, while a fourth, Syria, seemingly edging inexorably towards ‘tipping point.’
Other governments in the region, notably Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, long steeped in the practice of one or another form of undemocratic rule, have acknowledged the significance of the Arab Spring by hurriedly announcing modest political reforms in an effort to quell varying degrees of internal restlessness. What the Arab Spring has accomplished compels a major reassessment of the implications of its outcomes so far for the role of the Middle East in international affairs.
That having been said the accomplishments of what is still a far from complete process remain unclear. The most that can be said up to this point is that three of the region’s long-standing regimes have been deposed. While some western Middle East analysts appear to have taken the view, seemingly more out of optimism than certainty, that regime-change is necessarily a precursor to the emergence of western-style democracy, the available evidence in Tunisia, Egypt and, more recently, in Libya, suggests that democratic government could prove far more elusive than the removal of dictatorial rule.
In Tunisia, the recent elections victory by the moderate Islamist An-Nahda party has not been met with universal acceptance of the result, while the seemingly slow pace of political reforms in Egypt appears to have triggered a post-Mubarak restlessness that has witnessed fresh popular protest, clashes between the authorities and the rolling back by the military of the earlier agreed timetable for an elected government. In Libya, meanwhile, the still unclear circumstances in which Muammar Gaddafi was killed provides the country’s National Transition Council (NTC) with a chilling reminder that the desire for a post-Gaddafi democratic regime, modelled along western lines may not be universally desirable.
The common thread linking the ‘post-revolution’ instability in these countries are the divisions, ethnic, tribal, religious and political, that have already begun to emerge out of their ‘liberation,’ so that while the Arab Spring can lay claim to a measure of success as reflected in the removal of three unpopular regimes, there are already clear indications of seasons of discontent and perhaps even upheaval to come. Therein lies the challenge for the United States’ foreign policy in the Middle East.
Washington may have been the chief cheerleader in the popular protests that have characterized the Arab Spring, but up until now, given the ‘post-revolution’ conditions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, it has come away with little for its troubles. President Barack Obama’s hope that regime-change can provide opportunities for “self-determination and opportunity” remains light years away from being a ‘done deal,’ and even if democratic rule were to emerge in any or all of the affected states, that can still turn out, from America’s standpoint, to be a poisoned chalice.
Of particular concern to Washington will be the fact that the slogans of democracy that heralded the start of the Arab Spring have been, in some cases, overtaken by religious fundamentalist sentiments so that as the post-dictatorship scenarios emerge in the ‘liberated’ countries, America will become increasingly challenged to determine what it can and should endorse and what it cannot. Even now, US foreign policy analysts must be reminding themselves of the Iraq experience, where efforts to replace a protracted dictatorship with some form of democracy have witnessed more conflict that has come at a high and continuing cost to Washington.
Some of the challenges inherent in what would be the US concern that regime-change be attended by transition to democratic government have already surfaced in post-Gaddafi Libya, where Washington’s call for an investigation into the circumstances of Gaddafi’s killing have been endorsed only half-heartedly by the country’s National Transition Council (NTC). The NTC knows only too well that those responsible for the former dictator’s demise are being celebrated as heroes by many if not most Libyans.
In Libya, as in Egypt and Tunisia, the US would be mindful of the danger that democratic government might significantly empower fundamentalist Islamic forces in those countries, developments which Washington will doubtless regard as a threat to its own security. Israel too will not be indifferent to the likelihood of the consolidation of fundamentalist Islam in the Middle East, buttressed by the power of the state.
US foreign policy in the Middle East has always been underpinned by a healthy dose of opportunism, as reflected in its convenient support for dynastic and dictatorial regimes there of which Egypt and the kingdoms of the region are the best examples. Even in the cases of Tunisia, Libya and Syria, it is unlikely that Washington would have risked the instability that the change now threatens by seeking to influence the events that triggered the Arab Spring. The likelier scenario is that Washington’s support for the popular uprisings was triggered by that very opportunism that underpins its foreign policy posture towards the Middle East. The US would have assessed the extent of the challenge which the Arab Spring posed to the survival of the deposed regimes and would have recognized that it could not afford to be excluded from exerting influence on regime-change when it came.
Up until now, the US has accomplished very little for its efforts, even if the season of the Arab Spring is yet to reach an end; more than that, its involvement in seeking to influence the direction of change in the affected countries is likely to present new, enormous and costly challenges to its foreign policy in the Middle East.
