A year after the Arab Spring uprisings, the American audience appears flummoxed by the resolution of that drama.
A new Rasmussen poll shows that a third of Americans think the uprisings were good for the United States, a third think they were bad for the U.S., and almost another third say they had no impact.The rest have no clue.
The problem, private intelligence firm Stratfor says, is the audience is focused on the wrong actors. Yes, the protesters are interesting characters. But in the end they have little influence over the long-term fate of the Arab regimes. The real drama is not on stage, but backstage.
In the Egyptian theater, for example, the military used the protests as a pretext for deposing Mubarek and thus resolving a crisis in succession. A year later, the regime remains; only the lead actor is gone.
In the Libyan theater, the dictator Gaddafi is dead. But not because he failed to quell the revolution. For decades, Gaddafi cultivated an international image as a dangerous madman. In the end, he paid for that image. Gaddafi was on the brink of crushing his opposition just last summer. Only NATO's intervention (because it feared a bloodbath) removed Gaddafi from power. Had Gaddafi positioned himself as a reasonable if forceful tyrant, he would remain in power today.
In the Syrian theater, Assad is still in charge and there are no signs he will step down.
The onstage image of the Arab regimes is one of fragility, Stratfor points out, but the backstage reality is they are quite durable. And even if they fall, the notion that they will be replaced by a Euro/American-style constitutional democracy is a illusory. If the regimes lose control of their theaters, the Islamists will fill the void, not the democrats.
