Iran Military Forum

Bertrand Badie Warns of an Arab Winter

By: Jihad Yousef al-Khalil

Published Wednesday, October 12, 2011


Badie sees the Arab revolutions as having been successful chiefly on three fronts: in terms of mobilization, in toppling or undermining existing regimes, and in “attracting the attention of the entire world.”


French political theorist Bertrand Badie warns of an “Arab Winter” as popular protests in the region encounter a combination of regime repression, elite retrenchment, and external intervention.

Badie says that while the succession of social revolutions of the Arab Spring have transformed the politics of the entire region, they still face a fundamental challenge: They have yet to show that they can lay the foundation for an alternative to the existing political order.

Badie, a professor at the Paris Institute for Political Studies and a renowned international relations theorist, sees something unique in the seemingly spontaneous nature of the Arab uprisings.

“For the first time in contemporary history, we see a revolution emerging from society without a political mediator — without a leader or organization or ideology,” he explains. “We also saw social mobilization — from Tunisia to Syria via Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain — that did not reflect any pre-planned political strategy, but was propelled by its own internal dynamics.”

This, in turn, conditioned the regimes’ political reactions to the outbreak of the protest movements. “The rulers took no initiatives on the national, regional, or international levels, but had to adjust to what was happening,” Badie notes.

“But can the social revolution be victorious on its own?” Badie asks aloud. “That is the question that sums up the transitional period between the past and present. Are the revolutions that brought down or shook the foundations of the existing Arab order capable of establishing an alternative order?”

Badie sees the Arab revolutions as having been successful chiefly on three fronts: in terms of mobilization, in toppling or undermining existing regimes, and in “attracting the attention of the entire world.”

But these uprisings have yet to formulate the features of a new order, while on the ground “we see the gradual restoration of the dictatorial regime as is happening in Tunisia and Egypt; repression as in Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen; or the summoning of foreign forces as in Libya.”

Badie concedes that the success of the NATO campaign in Libya may encourage Western powers to readopt the discredited doctrine of ‘regime change,’ but warns this would be a mistake. “The idea of imposing a regime from abroad is a mirage marketed by those who have an interest in it,” he says. The US failed totally in this respect in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The fact that the NATO military intervention managed to bring down the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has caused confusion in this regard. “But that was not about changing the regime. It was about destroying the previous regime,” Badie observes. He insists “we should drop the idea of regime change from our political minds. It inevitably leads to disaster.” Moreover, he adds, “something new” is being built in the Arab world, “so the scope for external influence and pressure is very limited.”

Badie expresses frustration at the debate currently taking place in the West about whether the Arab Spring is likely to help or hinder radical Muslim groups, a concept that dominates Western thinking about the region.

“We are the victims of pre-packaged thinking,” he says. One point of view sees the Arab Spring as heralding a liberal and democratic upsurge that will sweep away or at least isolate the Muslim movements. Others believe it sets the stage for the Muslims to take the upper hand and ultimately triumph. “Both of these explanations are naive,” says Badie. “The reality is that if this Spring ends in failure or an impasse, or if it does not succeed in translating the social movement into a new political regime, the radical Islamic currents and groups will have an opportunity to win the game.” Conversely, “these groups are likely to fade away if a new political order develops.”

Badie identifies another early Western misconception about the Arab Spring: that it is unconnected to the Palestinian stuggle. “The reality is quite the opposite,” he says. “In one respect, there is an obvious empathy between resisting the humiliation inflicted by tyrannical regimes and resistance against externally-imposed humiliation.” But the connection goes much further, as evidenced by the recent storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo. “No Arab leader will risk being seen to cooperate with Israel in the way that Hosni Mubarak did,” he adds.

With the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN, “the ‘Palestine Question’ has indeed become part and parcel of the Arab Spring,” says Badie. The new strategic reality created by the Arab uprisings moved Mahmoud Abbas to seek statehood. This placed Palestine back at the top of the international agenda after years of neglect, in defiance of the US and Israel, underlining the failure of the US-sponsored diplomatic process.

Meanwhile, the credibility of the US and Europe in the Arab world — which they had tried to shore up by voicing support for the Arab Spring — had been dealt another blow with Western opposition or cautiousness toward the Palestinian bid for UN recognition.

The backing of Western capitals for the Arab uprisings has been “calculated and inconsistent,” Badie observes, “and it risks rapidly running into contradictions.”

US President Barack Obama is a case in point. He appeared to strike a bold posture when he went along rhetorically with the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. But he felt that he had to hold back over Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria. He dithered and equivocated over Libya. And then his threat to veto the Palestinian UN bid, contrary to his declared convictions and the policy he pursued for two years, “completely wrecked US diplomatic standing in the Arab world.”

This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.


http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/bertrand-badie-warns-arab-winter