"In conditions where no public life exists, everything goes under the surface. You dont know what goes on under the surface. Tomorrow something might happen, a very small but important thing which pushes the whole course of events in a different way. In a totalitarian state all things are unpredictable."– Václav Havel(1988 interview, David Storey)
VÁCLAV HAVEL was speaking of the prospects for Eastern Europe before the Berlin Wall fell. But his insight, that sense of unpredictability as silent forces undermine the seemingly immovable and the smallest of incidents tip history, could have been a prologue to the titanic theatrical event that was 2011, a year which ranks with the other political earthquakes of the last half century, 1989, 1968, and 1956. Out of a clear blue sky, it seemed, dawned the Arab Spring . . . in retrospect, we will inevitably claim, so obvious, so inevitable.
In Tunisia the spark was provided by the improbable 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi, a market trader from the small town of Sidi Bouzid with no interest in politics or activism. When, on December 17th, 2010 corrupt officials seized his stock and weighing scales, pushing him too far, Bouazizi doused himself in lighter fuel and set himself, and the Middle East, alight. No part of the region was untouched by its own Berlin Wall moment.
The year began with the Arab Spring and ended with thousands marching against Vladimir Putin. Timemagazine aptly chose "the protester" as its "person of the year", reflecting the organic link that connected Cairo to the region's conflagration, to the indignadosof Spain and Greece, the "Occupy" activists of Wall Street and countless cities, and the mass protests in Moscow: Tahrir Square tremors rippling around the world.
The revolutions, finished and unfinished, that swept the Arab world, would start the process of transforming not only closed feudal societies with varying degrees of success, but regional political dynamics and indeed global politics.
Not least was the flowering of a new brand of Islamic politics, a reconciliation of Islam and democratic values owing much to Turkeys AKP. In the first election since the Arab uprising Ennahda, long repressed, won more seats than any other in Tunisia. Leader Rachid Ghannouchi spoke of a false dichotomy: “People were presented with a choice: either Islam without modernity or modernity without Islam . . .We want Ennahda as an open space: open to religious people, non-religious, male, female . . .” It would, he insisted, dispel stereotypes of Islamists as violent, intransigent, enemies of the West. In Egypt and elsewhere, still experimenting in the crucibles of unfinished revolutions, brother parties are making similar gains.
As important has been the simultaneous political and military eclipsing of Al-Qaeda, symbolised most dramatically in May by the US assassination of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. (Although dealing a crippling blow to the group, it has, however, at the same time contributed to a dangerously destabilising Pakistan-US rift).
The Arab Spring also transformed regional dynamics. An energised Arab League became a voice for reform and criticism of the most obdurate, notably Syria, whose regime appears determined to drown its own people in blood. In doing so the league, reflecting its Sunni-dominated membership, is now more actively pursuing its wider agenda of circumscribing the revolutionary Shia regime in Iran, Syria’s most important foreign ally.
Strengthened regionally by the final US pullout from Iraq, Iran remains, however, determined to press on with its nuclear programme, isolating itself internationally and prompting dangerous talk of a pre-emptive attack by the US or Israel. The latter has become increasingly jittery about the Tehran threat, not least because of the loss of key regional ally Egypt. Despite a bout of optimism around the release of longtime Israeli prisoner Gilad Shalit in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians, Israel remains more deeply mired in irredentism.
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In Europe, shaken by its own economic/political earthquake, the failure of nerve of politicians stood in marked contrast to the courage of the Middle East’s youth. The EU was reactive and foot-dragging, never ahead of the curve, in responding to what was an assault on the sovereignty of weakened democratic governments. The result, the toppling of leaders in Greece, Italy, and arguably Spain and Ireland, was due not so much, as many would have it, to Brussels or Berlin, but uncompromising financial markets.
As investment banker Roger Altman, a former Clinton deputy treasury secretary, observed in the Financial Times, financial markets have become "a global supra-government. They oust entrenched regimes where normal political processes could not do so. They force austerity, banking bailouts and other major policy changes . . . leaving aside unusable nuclear weapons, they have become the most powerful force on earth."
The EU’s leaders laboured through 16 summits to produce in December, belatedly, a not altogether convincing defence mechanism in the form of a heavily disguised means of collectivising member-states’ debt – not, pace Germany and the ECB, the eurobonds that by general consent were called for. Now the resulting treaty may plunge us back into another referendum campaign.
In the US it was a time for steady-as-she-goes as the presidential election cycle got under way. And with the administration focusing on never-ending budget crises, prospects for foreign policy initiatives dimmed. Republican candidates, however, each more gung-ho than the last, have vied with each other to demand the bombing of Tehran.Watch this space.