Saudi Arabia, the West’s most strategic “asset” in the region, feared it might also feel the flames of freedom fanning the Arab nations. If such were to happen – and His Majesty’s gift comprised no political reforms – how would Britain, Europe and, most importantly, the United States react?
At root is the historic context which has given rise to this Arab Spring. Colonial interests set up and then protected those now being toppled. But while individuals have been vanquished or have fled, those interests remain – military, strategic and oil. They are most obscenely demonstrated by David Cameron’s “merchant-of-death” arms tour even as Colonel Gaddafi’s mercenaries opened fire on his own people.
But the countries of the Middle East are now living in a post, post-colonial world in which the stratospheric differences between the super-rich elites of both monarchies and notional republics, are being challenged by global change ranging from the economic crisis, the freedom of expression conferred by mobile telephony and “social media”, and the independence of al-Jazeera. These are complemented by the nascent desire of a new generation to throw off the shackles of national oppression and foreign domination. The common denominator in all the protests has been a call for freedom, an end to the violation of democratic rights and demands for economic justice. In this future there is no place for the autocratic despots and their regimes which have fallen, or are falling, but have not yet been replaced by any fully-formed alternatives. The demands have buried the already discredited neo-conservative notion that Arabs or Muslims are innately hostile to democracy.
If there is to be justice for the sacrifices of the protesters, the post-despot regimes will be underpinned by new constitutions enshrining social and political freedoms, free and fair elections, and economic fairness. It will not be easy balancing the social, political and religious rights and desires of disparate communities but there is a historic opportunity for a new dispensation across the Middle East. While we await it, Egypt and Tunisia remain under the control of the military, raising doubts about how far they might be prepared to allow full civilian democratic control. The writer Tariq Ali describes it thus: “American hegemony in the region has been dented but not destroyed.”
Any further interference – covert or military – or even couched in the “interventionist-war-against-genocide” language favoured by Shadow Defence Secretary Jim Murphy, would be an act against the democratic revolution already hailed by the democratic countries of the West. Iraq showed the errors inherent in this approach. It is too early to say where these events will end, but whatever emerges will be stronger left in the hands of the peoples of the Arab nations.
