One Must See The Arab Spring In Conjunction With The Regional Cold War Between Iran & Allies and GCC & Allies
The ideal for someone like me is for the Arab spring to have by now produced a new and an advanced form of government and politics in its countries and those nations would by now have started to settle down and slowly reap the benefits of their efforts. The reality as we all by now know is history takes its sweet time and forced change may produce change of leadership but real change will still take its sweet time.
France with all its dynamic leadership of change via revolution, when compared to the more conservative English gradual change approach, is not in any form more democratic than the UK today but the UK’s road was much smoother.
However, sometimes leadership keeps the lid so tight that an explosion is the only way a society has to free a political leadership's blockage on gradual change.
Ideally again, if we were in a vacuum with no regional or global challenges, and if change had to occur by force because of tight lid leadership, then others should leave that society to itself to slowly settle down and find its new rhythm and tune and extend help if they can and when asked without taking sides with any of the internally competing forces. Very much like the world has acted in the case of Tunisia, allowing the country to settle down naturally and slowly fine tuning its future, with very little external interference.
But unfortunately, Tunisia is the exception, it is much more mature socially than most of the Arab Spring Nations, its political elite are sufficiently intellect and its brotherhood party realized early on the dangers and difficulties of leading alone. This helped maintain a minimum of nation solidarity and kept the Tunisian brotherhood party in politics even if they lost the lead role. Tunisia also is lucky enough for not being a primary geography in the regional Cold War that is being fought for years now between Iran & Allies, and the GCC & Global Coalition.
Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Egypt are however very much front line battle territories and hence, even if the GCC did not interfere and left them to find their new balance, Iran and Allies wouldn’t.
So if those nations needed to explode, should we leave them alone and allow them to fall to Iranian's sphere of influence? Or not? And how has the GCC & Global Alliance fared so far as compared to Iran and allies?
I would say the GCC cannot disengage from its regional responsibilities and must seek to influence the shape of its region and neighborhood. And judging from how I read things, I would say we have done OK.
The GCC & Allies have stabilized and secured Egypt (see last paragraph for details on this), they have allowed Iran to put itself into an expensive, exhausting trap that Iran will only come out of a loser, by it taking the responsibility for the leading group's in control of Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Being the lead supporter to a weak falling State experiencing a severe civil war is extremely expensive. It requires military boots on the ground, advisors, military equipment, economic help to support the population living under that government's protection, keeping vital infrastructure running, basic food available etc., a very expensive exercise and as the Americans have found out in Iraq, you can spend hundreds of billions, lose troops and still come out as the party responsible for the mess.
Iran today is suffering from a weak oil market that will stay this way for many years to come. It is engaged with boots on ground and advisors and responsibility for the state guardians in three large regional territories with a complex multi-party civil war being fought in each. An Iran that in itself has growing internal struggles, disastrous finances and a challenge with the global community.
While the GCC / Global Alliance, has prevented Egypt from failing, is sitting on the side line letting Iran fight Al Qaida and ISIS, allowing the two to battle each other to exhaustion.
In the meantime, the GCC & Global Alliance, is sufficiently confident that when Iran & Allies started losing badly (like at one point in Iraq and Syria against ISIS), an Arab / USA / French air campaign was provided to help them not lose out totally and allow them to recover and stay in the fight!!! They engaged the Kurdish Paramilitary forces very much an American alley to engage in supporting in the fight against ISIS. Is this not confidence?
In keeping the battle balanced, most likely the GCC/Global Alliance will at some point reduce its anti ISIS intervention to keep the battle equal until both Iran and the extremists are exhausted and the Yemenis , Syrians and Iraqi's are tired of waring and are ready to search for social peace, very much like the Lebanese unfortunate civil war experience.
By that time Iran would be socially, financially and politically exhausted, has lost economic market share regionally to GCC, Egypt and Turkey and those nations now emerging from long civil wars, would be in need of partners that are more economically focused and have the means to help them rebuilt and move forward.
A last note on why there was no choice but for the Egyptian Army and the GCC to move in to stabilize Egypt:
Although a politically liberal thinker like me would allow a society to find its own natural balance without external intervention, in Egypt and with a regional Cold War in full force, it was not possible for the GCC and Allies to lose Egypt to Iran or to an unstable failing state (to the same extent one could leave, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Iraq). For the social, political and economic cost to recover a highly messed up Egypt would be too much to bear and the instability it creates in the meantime, would make it difficult for the GCC and Allies to focus on containing the Iran expansion. Stabilizing Egypt and helping it recover economically while not cheap is the more efficient alternative.
Especially when the Egyptian Brotherhood party, unlike the Tunisian counterpart, was not interested (big mistake) in a national coalition that would have help involve everyone and in the process of building the new Egypt, it also started playing the Iranian card as a means of threatening the GCC & Alliance (another major mistake) leaving no other choice to the Egyptian other side, the GCC and its global coalition.
Understanding the Arab spring developments in conjunction with the regional Cold War makes it clear that the GCC and coalition was tolerant and understanding of the Arab spring (even if not comfortable), but this coalition also need to manage with other serious regional conflict.
So much so that I believe Turkey's leadership (although very sympathetic to the brotherhood party) now sees this in the regional Cold War scenario, resulting in the latest Saudi /Turkish approaches and possibly forward Turkish/Egyptian approaches, I also believe the brotherhood party has learned or is in the process of understanding the mistakes and a slow reinstatement of the party in regional politics is underway.