Monday 26 December 2011

How The West Was Caught Out By The Arab Spring

It goes without saying that the most dynamic impact of these seismic convulsions has been on the Arab world itself. But because the Western powers had, to a greater or lesser extent, regarded the first four as their friends, and had at least, for all his dubious alliances, co-existed, in the coldest of peaces, with President Assad, these outcomes would also require a re-think, at once hasty and profound, of their approach to the region.
In 2005 the then US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, made a speech in Cairo lamenting that for too long the West had sacrificed the need for reform in the Arab world to what it saw as the greater imperative of "stability". Now, forces in which the West had played no part were confronting it with their stark failure to act on her memorable, but as it turned out, hollow advice. Read More. 

1 comment:

  1. Rice, Clinton and many other U.S. officials seem to genuinely believe that they predicted the Arab Spring. If so, their response is even more unimpressive. The WH wasn't fully prepared to manipulate - although it did catch up fast. Obviously there was never a plan to unequivocally support the democratic movements that would emerge.

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