Optimism fades five years after Arab Spring uprisings
Specialist says optimism of the moment has been crushed by the realities of governing
WASHINGTON — Five years ago, television viewers in America and across the world were transfixed by popular uprisings in Middle East that protested governments from Egypt to Iran and beyond.
Today, the would-be revolution known as the Arab Spring is long over, with autocrats or chaos ruling many countries affected by the upheaval. Nathan Brown, an author and professor of international affairs at George Washington University, will discuss the historic events Friday as part of an Albuquerque International Association’s lecture series. The 3 p.m. talk is at the UNM Continuing Education Auditorium.
Brown is a specialist in Middle Eastern politics and the author of six books, including his most recent, “When Victory is Not an Option: Islamist Parties and SemiAuthoritarian Politics in the Arab World.”
Brown said the Arab uprisings — rooted in civic discontent over economic and political disparities — sparked intense optimism, then bitter disappointment.
“It was an incredibly hopeful moment for
people in the Arab world … and five years later we certainly see those hopes dashed,” Brown told the Journal. “Things definitely have gotten worse. The issues the region is fixated on now are refugee problems, state collapse, sectarian warfare — that kind of thing. I’ll be looking at how this happened.”
Brown said the hopes for lasting revolutionary reform in many Middle Eastern countries were dashed by the reality of governing.
“The (existing) political systems of the region were very bad, but what nobody had a clue how to do was build newer and better political orders, so you either had the old ones reemerge or the new ones collapse,” Brown explained.
Today, Syria and Yemen have fallen into violent anarchy, while Egypt is governed under renewed authoritarianism. The brutal civil war that’s claimed more than 400,000 lives in Syria had its genesis in President Bashar Assad’s violent crackdown on initially peaceful protests that were sweeping Syria and the rest of the Middle East in 2011.
Some foreign policy analysts criticize the Obama administration for offering only muted support for the revolutions, but Brown said that criticism misses the mark.
“The Obama administration understood from the beginning — correctly — that these were big, long-term political forces at work,” Brown said. “Fighting it would have been fighting a tide, and supporting it wouldn’t have made much difference. Where you can fault (the Obama administration) is particular decisions they have made. The decision to support an intervention in Libya but not intervene in Syria — it’s not clear there were better options available — but in both cases, you can say there was a disastrous outcome.”
But while the Arab Spring didn’t blossom into a bounty of reforms or a better way of life for most, Brown says it’s too soon to assess the uprising’s longer-term implications for the Middle East.
“Five years is a short period of time in which to judge major historical upheaval,” he said. “It may be there are long-term trends in these societies related much more to what is happening with current youth rather than what we see in the headlines.”