Is that how you view the political movements happening in the Arabic-speaking majority world - Sorry for the pedantry - from 2011 onward that we're consumed by resentment toward the West?
It's gotta be about you, right?
> "The arab world has always been far too divided to able to draw clear borders around their states"
I had no idea that these political movements and the resulting turmoil were about border disputes between states, and not primarily domestic political issues. The more you know ...
> "Until then, tyranny worked."
Could this explain your theory the perceived resentment in the Arabic speaking world towards the West?
At least now, it would be warranted and well earned since you wish on other people harm, maybe you should get paid for this in kind.
The US is likely to be able to dodge the Trump bullet and skirt falling into a populist authoritarian rule coming November but this doesn't preclude this from happening in the future.
Maybe you should get some taste for how tyranny can turn your life upside down and experience it firsthand before you could wish it onto others.
Anyhow, I still don't wish harm on innocent people but if they're full of hate toward others to the point of blinding them to fall into a trap this big and this wide, I wouldn't help them to avert it or save them.
I m not american. This is a cynical view from Europe. Believe it or not it's closer to the truth rather than believing that having elections suddenly would fix all the problems in countries like egypt, libya, syria.
Because just taking your word for it won't cut it, sorry.
> "elections suddenly would fix all the problems in countries like egypt, libya, syria"
I'd take ballot-box-only democracy and majoritarianism over tyrannical strongman rule or military dictatorships anytime of the day but this is just me, a Middle Eastern native who really cares for the future, prosperity and the welfare of people living there.
I think that I also have the right to express and strive to achieve these political goals without interference or the "guardianship" of outside players. Since I can't tell you how you should run your countries, I expect this to be reciprocated too when it comes to running ours, and I think that this is a small thing to ask for.
It's very intriguing that for "Arab Spring" skeptics to only focus on failures like Libya and not success stories like in Tunisia. It just detracts from their credibility and makes their viewpoints look very partisan.
It is not the fault of the countries in the Eastern part of the Arabic speaking world that they're surrounded by reactionary forces in the region like the oil sheikhdoms or nationalist-led Israel that they would do everything they can to undermine the then-nascent democratic experiments to protect their interests and save their thrones but this is the topic of another article.
Woh, woh, woh, what on Earth does Israel have to do with this? Israelis haven't done anything to undermine the "democratic experiments" in any of its neighbouring states. In fact, Israel is the only regional country to consistently support Kurdish democracy, which it has done for decades.
If so, I don't see that there's any point of arguing over facts like these.
It's OK to have reservations about the democratic experiments in the region but if you could call "Talibani vs Barazani" a democracy, then I think it's fair that I get to call what happened in Egypt or Tunisia a democratic experiment.
Speaking of Kurdish democracy, I believe that opening channels with other players in the region is good strategy to secure the interests of the Kurdish people or elite, but excessive pandering to one particular player at the expense of others in the region would be very shortsighted move esp if you're planning to stay in this neighborhood for long time.
A balanced and well thought-out approach to foreign policy in the region would be a better alternative to the Kurdish people for whom I wish good luck for their legitimate political aspirations.
Yes. That's a ridiculous assertion. To think that Israel (population: 7 million) has the power, influence, or will to "undermine the then-nascent democratic experiments" of a country like Egypt (population: 82 million), is ludicrous enough. To assert such a ludicrous statement as fact, without any supporting evidence is a wild conspiracy theory.
Your last three paragraphs have virtually nothing to do with the argument at-hand.
Conspiracist much?
The usual overt basis for complaints that elections are insufficient is that they don't end up as ballot-box-only democracy, but that they instead they often end up as one person, one vote, one time -- followed by tyrannical strongman rule.
OTOH, that's clearly not generally worse than just leaving existing tyrannical strongmen in place. I think the real concern is that locally popular strongmen buoyed by such a one-time election, in the short term, are more likely to have the domestic support to cause problems for neighbors and outsiders, while the often-unpopular existing strongmen are frequently hobbled in their ability to cause external problems by the needs to deal -- whether through active repression or ongoing negotiation and mollification -- with unruly internal factions. (Another is that external elites often have connections and established ways of working with the existing strongmen.)
The chance of making progress toward real democracy is often not seen as worth the risk for external parties (especially external elites); locals, of course, may have different calculus.
That's a very true observation but that doesn't mean that elites will always get their way and prevail over the masses.
The masses can sometimes secure victories at their expense, albeit short-lived in most cases, and force them to change their mind and adopt their ideas.
In general, the Arabs were happy subjects of the Ottoman Empire until around 1900-1914, when the CUP's political program attempted to marginalize the Arabs; even then, the Arab Revolt was a very narrow revolt with support almost exclusively from the Hejaz (western Saudi Arabia in modern terms) Prior to that, the Ottoman Empire was generally very supportive of the Arab cultural expression. While the governors of the Syrian and Egyptian provinces tended to be problematic from the point of view of the Sultan, the populations of those provinces were far less prone to revolt than Anatolia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
We'll stop meddling and making things worse. The leaders of those countries won't be able to substitute oil wealth for popular support or funnel money into pushing Wahhabism.
It's the best thing that could happen to them.
... In the long term.
In the short term, it's going to be very, very bad for them indeed, as the sole source of foreign exchange goes away and the ordinary folks find themselves abandoned in a climate-change-drought-crippled land that has become populated well above its agricultural carrying capacity, and the elite jets off to enjoy their stolen wealth in Switzerland.
There was a recent HN article about Israel's progress with desalination[1]. Obvious funding issues aside, I wonder if that approach could ease some of the water issues?
Perhaps that kind of investment would be a good use for the oil income, whilst they've still got it.
It's not like they would not see it coming. Petrol is eventually going to become too expensive at some point, and they should invest accordingly. But numerous past examples of countries relying on raw resources have shown they usually don't adapt and plan, so I don't have too much hope in their case either.
The rulers are doing fine -- they've got armies and secret police and offshore investments so that when things turn to shit they can just jet off into exile like the Shah of Iran.
The ordinary folks don't have the money and they don't have the oil, they stay quiet for now because they don't want to be imprisoned or executed and because the rulers spend a small chunk of their surplus on social security.
In other words, the people with money to invest don't care, and the folks who might care are in no position to take action.
It was made a mess before and after WW2 and it never was allowed to self correct. If anything the powers that be kept trying to keep it bottled up until a few set pieces fell and the house came tumbling down. This isn't to say that going into Iraq didn't cause part of the problem, that simply revealed just how force the Saddam regime was applying to keep it all together.
Letting Libya fall like everyone did was likely the real issue. That whole country went without anyone trying to step in and allowed groups to assemble. Then the misguided interference with Syria by the US just sent the whole region to hell. You would have thought Libya would have given the administration a hint what would go wrong, let alone an Administration so hell bent on reminding people of Iraq repeated that mess twice if not worse.
The region has to reshape itself. What the West must do is try to minimize the civilian cost. This does not mean going in a setting new borders, but mostly protecting those who get out and making sure they have safe exit points.
Even with the fault of European colonialism, they were doing just fine until we decided to get rid of Saddam.
Yes, it's ~43000 words and at 250wpm, it would be a 3 hour read!
I think I'll wait to collect some more opinions/tldrs like yours before reading it myself. Three hours would be a terrible waste of time on a substandard article. Open question: Are there better articles on the topic that use that would use that finite reading time better?
I tried Safari's 'Export as PDF' but the formatting is too mangled. Safari can also save as a single 'web archive' file but I can't get that file to open on my ipad.
Firefox has a save option of 'Web page, complete', but you end up with lots of files, impractical to move around to other devices. Printing as a PDF also mangles the format.
This piece may be fun to get through your flight, but it should offer a holistic perspective.