Revolution in the Arab World - Observation of a lost soul Blog

foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • winners, losers
2. Al Jazeera: With round-the-clock coverage that put a lot of Western
media to shame, Al Jazeera comes out with its reputation enhanced. Its ability
to transmit these images throughout the Arab world may have given
events in Tunisia and Egypt far greater regional resonance. If Radio Cairo
was the great revolutionary amplifier of the Nasser era, Al Jazeera may have
emerged as an even more potent revolutionary force, as a medium that is
shared by Arab publics and accessible to outsiders too. And I’ll bet that is
what Mubarak now thinks.
3. Democratic reformers elsewhere in the Middle East: Authoritarian
governments in several other countries moved quickly after the revolutions
in Egypt and Tunisia to take concrete steps to try to defuse potential
upheavals and accommodate some reformist demands. It’s early days, of
course, but democratic reformers throughout the region have the wind at
their backs. Which goes to show that those who supported nonmilitary efforts
to encourage more participatory forms of government were right (and
those who sought to spread democracy at the end of a rifle barrel were not).
4. The Egyptian military: Paradoxically, the Egyptian armed forces
emerged from the crisis with their political power enhanced even further.
The United States is now betting that the Army will oversee a peaceful transition,
and the early statements from military authorities are reassuring. The
big question: Will the military commit itself to genuine reform, or will it try
to safeguard its own prerogatives and privileges in a post-Mubarak Egypt
5. China: Why is Beijing a winner here Simple. Whatever subsequently
happens in Egypt, the U.S. government is going to spend a lot of time and
attention to trying to manage its local and regional impact. That’s good
news for China because it means Washington will have less time to spend
on both its relations with Beijing and its other strategic partnerships in Asia.
I suspect Chinese officials would dearly love for the United States to remain
preoccupied by events in the Middle East, and the upheaval in Egypt makes
that much more likely. But this advantage is not without an obvious downside:
Given its own concerns for domestic legitimacy and internal stability,
the Chinese Communist Party leadership cannot be too happy to see an
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