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

foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • winners, losers
The End of the Beginning
BY DAVID A. BELL
There are, of course, many different ways of categorizing historical revolutions.
But for the purposes of understanding what is happening in the
Arab world—and the challenges it may pose for the United States—one
simple, rough distinction may be especially useful. This is the distinction
between revolutions that look more like 1688 and revolutions that look
more like 1789. The first date refers to England’s “Glorious Revolution,” in
which the Catholic, would-be absolute monarch James II was overthrown
and replaced by the Protestant William and Mary and the English Parliament
claimed powerful and enduring new forms of authority. The second
is, of course, the date of the French Revolution, which began as an attempt
to create a constitutional monarchy but ultimately led to the execution of
King Louis XVI, the proclamation of the First French Republic, and the
Reign of Terror.
A key feature of 1688-type revolutions is their relative brevity. They may
be preceded by lengthy periods of discontent, agitation, protest, and even
violence, but the revolutionary moment itself generally lasts for only a few
months (as in 1688 itself), or even weeks or days. A regime reaches a point
of crisis and falls. The consolidation of a new regime itself may well involve
much more turmoil and bloodshed, and eventually entail considerable political
and social change—but these later events are not considered part of
the revolution itself, and there is no sense of an ongoing revolutionary process.
Men and women do not define themselves as active “revolutionaries”
(in 1688, in fact, the English noun and adjective “revolutionary” did not yet
exist—it only came into frequent use after 1789).
Revolutions of the 1789 type are quite different. Their leaders and sup-
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