With the end of the Cold War, analysts advanced competing expectations about the likely character of the post-Cold War Order. Many expected a far-reaching transformation in the fundamental character of world politics. Some of these predictions were quite optimistic (especially by Liberals and Constructivists in International Relations theory) — believing the changes will lead to more peace and cooperation. Some, however, were Pessimists — predicting the emergence of new types of conflicts (for example, Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations”; and Robert Kaplan’s “The Coming Anarchy”), while others (the Realists in IR theory) remained skeptic regarding the possible transformation (for better or worse) in the fundamental character of international politics, even if taking into account specific changes in the global distribution of capabilities as leading to some important changes in the dynamics of the international system — whether in the direction of a benign hegemon or balance of power politics.
The paper will investigate the effects of the “Arab Spring” on security and cooperation in the Middle East according to these competing theoretical perspectives. The paper will then evaluate the explanatory and predictive power of the perspectives.
The Optimists underline the positive effects of the liberalization processes in the Arab world on rising prospects for cooperation both inside the Middle East as well as between the democratizing region with the democratic powers based on the pacifying and cooperative effects of liberal mechanisms such as the “democratic peace,” international institutions and the rising economic interdependence with the West and inside the region. The Skeptics (The Realists) minimize the importance of the domestic changes on foreign policy and international outcomes. According to them the key patterns will continue to be around the formation of regional balances of power and struggles over hegemony both inside the Middle East, and among the external powers involved in the region. The Pessimists will focus especially on the danger of the emergence of failed states as a result of the “Arab Revolt” and the spread of civil wars and foreign intervention. The “Clash of Civilizations” will highlight the cultural/religious constraints on the rise of liberal democracy in Arab/Muslim societies.
I argue that the combined effect of two factors — state strength and national congruence — is the most important for assessing the predictive power of the competing approaches. The two key factors are state strength — the effectiveness of the functioning of state institutions; and national congruence — the extent of congruence between geo-political boundaries and national aspirations and identities in the state. States, which are strong and nationally coherent, will tend to meet the Optimists’ predictions and will be good candidates for successful democratization and for the pacifying effects of liberalization. States which are both weak and incongruent — will follow the Pessimists’ predictions and will tend to be failed states with civil wars and foreign intervention; while strong states but incongruent will tend to produce a revisionist model and pose a potential threat to their neighbors. Finally, the instability prevalent in failed states can be mitigated by the intervention of a benign hegemon in the Middle East, but in highly fragmented regions such interventions might face a lot of problems and have some de-stabilizing effects.
It is unequivocally conspicuous the increase in violence and insecurity in most of the Arab countries after 2011. Suicide bombings, terrorist abductions and daily killings became the order of the day for many Arabs and Muslims. Jihadi terrorism and violence became the poster child of life in Arab and Muslim countries. While the Arab Spring of 2011 has been a watershed towards the democratization of the Arab regimes in the MENA region, however it turned into a mirage for most of the people of these countries. When the Arabrevolutions aimed at sacking authoritarian regimes in the region, the result was the creation of a power vacuum by the destruction of the pillars of the state power which led to the emergence of violent contending ethno-sectarian entities and the rise of unprecedented wholesale wave of violence threatening the every-day life of peoples and their properties. Throughout the Arab world and parts of Islamic Africa, revolutions have encouraged Al Qaeda ‘lookalikes’ to set up recruitment strongholds for support. On the other hand, the U.S. incoherent behavior in the ‘war on terrorism’ has ended up serving to breed terrorism. The U.S. State Department officials seem to watch helplessly as sympathizers to Al Qaeda in Mali, Libya, Syria and Iraq gain strength and support, while the U.S. Defense department scrambles to react to inept foreign policies. The U.S. policy towards the Arab world has been one cause of terrorism. The hypocritical policy has created havoc for some of the area’s nations. The emergence of the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq has also brought U.S. cold war nemesis, Russia, into the battle and pushed President Obma into forming a policy to defeat IS.
This aim of this paper is to look into the legacy of the Arab revolutions with regard to the seemingly endless security concerns in the region. The main point is to find out whether the Arab spring has contributed in one way or another to the rise of this violence in the MENA region and by extension the fate of democracy and if so how and why. It also traces the implications of US foreign policy and the effects of such violence on US future interests in the region.
The disturbance of Arabic countries especially in the MENA region called the “Arab Spring” has had a direct impact on the tourism industry of the Arab region. Volatile events, instabilities, political turmoil and extremism present the tourism industry with significant challenges. But in any event, future developments will depend in any case on the security situation in the country, as tourism is certainly a sector with many advantages in terms of foreign investment and foreign exchange. At the same time, it is a very sensitive sector. The slightest social upheaval, the smallest popular movement, these all have incalculable effects on the sector. Tunisia is an excellent example of what can happen to the tourism industry in such cases. This paper explores first the effects that the Arab Spring has had on tourism industry performance. We aim to identify the influence that events of the Arab Spring had on tourism in Middle Eastern and North African States, namely by examining the cases of other countries such as Egypt and Tunisia in comparison with Morocco and the United Arab Emirates.
Finally, the study examines the policies and strategies adopted by Tunisian governments in order to mitigate the crisis in the evolving tourism sector, and to develop recommendations on how the tourism industry can recover from the Jasmine Revolution.
From Russia’s aggression in Eastern Europe to the aftermath of the Arab Spring in the Southern Mediterranean, conflicts and violence highlight a range of new challenges to the EU’s external policy. There were six territorial disputes among the EU’s neighbours when the European Neighbourhood Policy was launched 12 years ago. None of these has been resolved, and both the Eastern and the Southern neighbours are more unstable and insecure today than they were when the Policy was launched. The EU seems unprepared to deal with these conflicts, as they now exist. This article analyses the European Neighborhood Policy as a framework for EU involvement in conflict prevention, management and resolution. The focus is twofold: first, on the principle of good neighborliness and the pitfalls preventing its effective implementation and, second, on the wider policy and political context of EU actorness in conflict and security matters.
In early 2011, the so-called ‘Arab spring‘ opened a new period of change, expectations and challenges in several North African countries. Despite of the democratic processes started in that countries, to important sectors of European media and public opinion, it seemed that Arab riots had mainly become another push factor for irregular migration to the European Union. Furthermore, the crisis management of Tunisian migrants arriving to Italy, stressed the European system of free movement of people in the Schengen area in an unthinkable way just few weeks before.
The aim of this paper is not to analyze the consequences of these events, neither in the Arab world nor in the Schengen performance. The main objective is to analyze the establishment of this migration-security nexus at the European level, and to examine how the EU deals with the security issue in relation with migration.