The arab spring- could it have happened earlier?

Fabilius

What it says. I know the price of food and cost of living had been going up. However these countries were dealing with mass unemployment, bad economies and bad regimes for a long time by that time.

Could an arab spring have happened earlier and to what effect?

I imagine that if it occurred a few years earlier it´d have seemed to have been thanks to Bush in the west. If it had happened before 2001 or early 2001 we´d be looking at a totally different world.

But would that be possible?
 

stewacide

I don't see any reason it couldn't have happened any time after the Cold War. I think it's more likely earlier in the context of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, since that would remove a convenient whipping boy for the dictators, and would hopefully provide an example of a functioning Arab democracy (in Palestine and possibly Lebanon)

edit -- I'd also suggest that the Iraq war delayed an outbreak of Arab people-power, except insofar as it popularized Al Jazeera, although I can see how others would disagree.
 

stewacide

...by focusing Arab anger at the United States and the West instead of where it properly belonged: at their own leadership.
 

Fabilius

Ah, POD being: Saddam not invading, leading to an earlier arabic spring and a democratic middle east in 2011? Could be a nice read.
 

Ak-84

Banned
Streotypes about diverting anger onto US and Israel aside, (which inspite of providing comfort to legions of Islam and Arabphobes have little basis in reality) I would say that the Arab spring is about as early as possible. Remember what most Arabs in the middle east want is to be left the hell alone and most tinpot dictators were very good at that and assuaging anger through patronage. What has happened is that with the rise in education system is that the locals wanted better oppurtuites for jobs; jobs which the government could not provide outside of well...........government jobs; which most people were not willing to do.

Also most of the dictators have been and have had as their base the rural populace; even now the Arab spring is mostly an urban phenomena.
 
tonsofun

tonsofun

It is worth remembering that the Arab Spring started because one man in Tunisia immolated himself. He was a university graduate forced to sell vegetables at the roadside just to live. If the authorities had let him do so then there is a good chance there would be no revolt in Tunisia and no protests in Egypt either. But sooner or later it would've happened. I doubt it could've happened earlier but it can certainly happen later.
 

ObssesedNuker

stewacide said:
...by focusing Arab anger at the United States and the West instead of where it properly belonged: at their own leadership.
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The bungling of the post-invasion occupation and resulting chaos also gave something for these dictators to point too as a reason for keeping them in power. I'll copy-and-paste what I said on another forum too explain:

Me said:
The anarchy, insurgency, and ethnic strife that followed the destruction of Saddam's government gave Arab dictators something too point at and say: "Do you want our country too wind-up like Iraq?"

The line is actually still effective in some of these nations. I remember reading a report in Newsweek that was done from within Syria in... I think it was May or June... where a Syrian family, who are/were well-off but not connected too the Syrian, say they do not support the protests because they are afraid a Syria-after-Asad would follow Iraq-after-Saddam's path. And sure enough, the reporter notes thats part of the Syrian government's propaganda response to the protests: "Do you want our country too wind-up like Iraq?"
Click to expand...
 
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