The pessimist's take on the Arab uprisings
Issandr El AmraniRob Malley and Hussein Agha, in a NYRB essay well worth reading for its many insights into the regional situation — most notably that it will continue to be extremely chaotic and could well result in a regional war — offer a grim prognostic about revolution:
Revolutions devour their children. The spoils go to the resolute, the patient, who know what they are pursuing and how to achieve it. Revolutions almost invariably are short-lived affairs, bursts of energy that destroy much on their pathway, including the people and ideas that inspired them. So it is with the Arab uprising. It will bring about radical changes. It will empower new forces and marginalize others. But the young activists who first rush onto the streets tend to lose out in the skirmishes that follow. Members of the general public might be grateful for what they have done. They often admire them and hold them in high esteem. But they do not feel they are part of them. The usual condition of a revolutionary is to be tossed aside.
The Arab world’s immediate future will very likely unfold in a complex tussle between the army, remnants of old regimes, and the Islamists, all of them with roots, resources, as well as the ability and willpower to shape events. Regional parties will have influence and international powers will not refrain from involvement. There are many possible outcomes—from restoration of the old order to military takeover, from unruly fragmentation and civil war to creeping Islamization. But the result that many outsiders had hoped for—a victory by the original protesters—is almost certainly foreclosed.
I think he's wrong, or rather than this is an unnecessarily pessimistic view of the long-term processes unleashed by what happened this year. Things could get very grim, especially in Yemen and Syria, but the picture is not one of universal despair.
Reader Comments (4)
Amrani, I think your comments are the right ones about the Arab Spring. There's no need of regional conflicts. The people who took part in the Arab Spring have proven they can work together with those who stayed at home. Ruth
Ah, yes, plenty to justify mindless optimism about the prospects for secular democratic institution building in Egypt... as the world witnesses the storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo. Once again the blind leftist-peaceniks are exposed (of course I am speaking about those on the Israeli side of the border, as apparently peaceniks don't exist on the other side). Will wait patiently for the condemnations of the rank violation of international law vis a vis vintage 1979 Tehran-type "protests" of embassies.... tick tick tick hmmm still waiting...
Yes, and at the end we will all end up dying and bold... What transpires from Malley and Agha's article is that THEY have not been part of the coming change, or that they sense that the likely immediate change is not going to please them. I wonder if the comments would have been that negative if the Arab upraising had not reached Syria...On the other hand, I thought Malley and Agha did a lot to clarify the anti-Palestinian bias in the Western politics and press...do they think that the Palestinian cause is more likely to advance in an eternal maintenance of the status quo? And what will happen to that revolution? Isn't it going to eat its children too?
The article is interesting, but Malley's pessimism is rather disingenuous. If pro-democratic groups are so powerless, the question must also be: who left those revolutionaries with so few resources? Who was happy to see them repressed and isolated? The 'Arab Spring' presented a fabulous opportunity which, had Western leaderships followed through with their democratic rhetoric before and after the uprisings, might not have caught non-Islamist opposition groups so weak and isolated, compared to the Egyptian Brotherhoods of this world. If this opportunity will indeed be wasted, it will not be for want of trying by those democratic forces which sparked the uprising in Egypt, for example. But Western capitals (and Israel) cannot shirk their responsibilities in stacking the cards against these forces.