Clifford D. May: An Arab Spring?
[Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and Islamism.]
Readers of tea leaves, tarot cards, and goat entrails may be able to predict the future. But prognostication is an ability that few journalists, politicians, diplomats, and intelligence officials have demonstrated consistently over time. So while it’s clear that the Muslim world is in the throes of a major transformation, let’s not pretend we know how this story ends.
It’s possible we’re seeing an Arab spring, a democratic awakening — uprisings thttp://www.history.com/classroom/hat will bring freedom to societies that have known only oppression. But it’s equally possible that one form of oppression will simply replace another. Will we see in the Middle East a repeat of what happened in Eastern Europe in 1989 or of what happened in Iran in 1979? The American Revolution or the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution? Or will it be some mix, with the outcomes in Tunisia and Bahrain markedly different from those in Libya and Egypt?...
It’s comforting to believe there is a “right side to history.” But if history demonstrates anything, it is that history has no preferences. History includes wars and interludes of peace, dark ages and enlightenments, cities rising and cities razed. Sometimes history marches from one age to the next. More often, it stumbles.
Although the future cannot be predicted, its course can be altered. Nazis, fascists, and Japanese militarists might have achieved world domination had Winston Churchill not replaced Neville Chamberlain as Britain’s prime minister in 1940. Were it not for Harry Truman, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and Ronald Reagan, Communism could have become the dominant global ideology by the end of the 20th century....
Read entire article at National Review
Readers of tea leaves, tarot cards, and goat entrails may be able to predict the future. But prognostication is an ability that few journalists, politicians, diplomats, and intelligence officials have demonstrated consistently over time. So while it’s clear that the Muslim world is in the throes of a major transformation, let’s not pretend we know how this story ends.
It’s possible we’re seeing an Arab spring, a democratic awakening — uprisings thttp://www.history.com/classroom/hat will bring freedom to societies that have known only oppression. But it’s equally possible that one form of oppression will simply replace another. Will we see in the Middle East a repeat of what happened in Eastern Europe in 1989 or of what happened in Iran in 1979? The American Revolution or the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution? Or will it be some mix, with the outcomes in Tunisia and Bahrain markedly different from those in Libya and Egypt?...
It’s comforting to believe there is a “right side to history.” But if history demonstrates anything, it is that history has no preferences. History includes wars and interludes of peace, dark ages and enlightenments, cities rising and cities razed. Sometimes history marches from one age to the next. More often, it stumbles.
Although the future cannot be predicted, its course can be altered. Nazis, fascists, and Japanese militarists might have achieved world domination had Winston Churchill not replaced Neville Chamberlain as Britain’s prime minister in 1940. Were it not for Harry Truman, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and Ronald Reagan, Communism could have become the dominant global ideology by the end of the 20th century....