Betraying the Arab Spring: How the West Risks Destroying the Liberal World Order

When thousands gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to celebrate the demise of Mubarak’s regime, a spark of hope was lit across the Middle East. Calls for freedom were heard loud and clear. Fourteen years later, that spark has been extinguished. Rather than enjoying well-won liberty, the people of Libya and Syria endured brutal civil wars, and Egyptians witnessed their revolution bring yet more dictators into power. Even Tunisia, once the poster child for democratic transition, now appears to be slipping back towards dictatorship. The West, as ever, holds much of the blame for this.

Whilst he built his presidential campaign on the hopes of millions of Americans, Obama’s response to the Arab Spring was a monumental disappointment. Outward expressions of support for democratisation were blurred by refusals to take clear sides. Meanwhile, NATO interventions in Libya birthed a situation of total chaos. In March this year, Syria’s regime finally fell, leaving behind at least 200,000 dead and a country haunted by the terrors of Bashar Al-Assad and ISIS. But if the West’s initial response to the movement was lacklustre at best, its current engagement with the region is an outright betrayal.

Trump’s recent Middle East jaunt confirmed the US’s steady abandonment of democratisation and human rights efforts would continue - this time overtly. Building on Biden’s feeble response to the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump encouraged his hosts at the Saudi-US Investment Forum to carry on “…charting your own destinies in your own way”. Moreover, he outright mocked the idea of any Western leader “lecturing” the region. Flattery was followed up by a series of tech and arms deals, including with fellow human rights offenders Qatar and the UAE. 

Not only do these trade deals insult the memory of those who rallied and died for freedom during the tumult of the Arab Spring, they’re a slap in the face to those still living with the reality of oppression. Simply put, America is prioritising profit over people. It now fully embraces and emboldens regimes which deny national elections, restrict women’s liberties, curtail workers’ freedoms and criminalise LGBT rights. 

Yet, the US also loses from this. For all the talk of America’s decline and the erosion of its clout in the world, legitimising autocracy in the Middle East will weaken its own influence both in that region and globally. As Obama, Biden and now Trump sought to avoid the previous intensity of US involvement overseen by the Bush administration, their disengagement with the region’s embedded human rights and dictatorship crises only serves to undermine Washington’s long-term interests. 

Furthermore, keeping autocracies alive will certainly not ensure the US’s security needs are met. China and Russia will be counting on US reliance on the Gulf States for short-term military and commercial pacts, knowing full-well that, should push come to shove, these and other states in the region will likely side with fellow autocracies over the United States. One only has to look at these states’ United Nations voting records to see the reality of this. During a US-led resolution to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council over its Ukraine invasion, all six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, abstained – with Riyadh going as far as to call Russia’s ejection “selective”. 

Yet whilst the US’s gradual disengagement on human rights can at least be partly explained by administration changes, the UK’s signing of a £1.6 billion trade deal with the Gulf states is inexcusable. Brexit pressures or not, the deal would represent a major set-back to the UK’s reputation as a global force for democracy. It would also entirely negate what remains of its increasingly diminished aid budget. Furthermore, as highlighted by the Trade Justice Movement, the actual commercial benefits of the deal for London will be miniscule.

With the two great democracies of the US and UK now actively undermining the liberal world order, the notion of the "end of history" popularised in the 1990s by Francis Fukuyama seems almost tragically comedic today. His idea that humanity had reached the end-point of its ideological evolution with the triumph of liberal democracy over communism and autocracy has not only failed to materialise, but appears to be collapsing entirely with a resurgent authoritarianism across the world – including within the West itself. 

Having apparently been abandoned by both Washington or London, the Middle East’s human rights cause effectively falls exclusively upon the European Union. Through its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), the EU has already established its capacity to transform a part of its foreign policy from pure realpolitik to one which is values-based. It's response to the Arab Spring even involved providing macro-financial assistance to Tunisia to support its economic and political reforms during its democratic transition.

Whilst the migration crisis now dominates the EU’s relationship with its southern neighbours, the EU has at least demonstrated its will to act as a force for democratisation in the region. Its challenge will be to not lose focus of this. For it is only a matter of time before another Arab Spring erupts. Europe would need to manage the next set of revolutions by addressing the link between the bloc’s security and unresolved human rights and autocracy crises to its south. If it succeeds, the EU could potentially triumph where the US and UK have failed, and serve as a bastion of support for the survival of the liberal world order. 

Image: Flickr/AK Rockefeller

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