The Fable of Arab Revolts: New Leaders Fold to American Demands

The Arab regimes, born as a result of the uprisings of their people, care more about their legitimacy in the eyes of the West than in the eyes of their own people.

The Arab revolts, which created a surge of hope among the long-oppressed people of those nations, have fallen into the hands of other masters. Nothing can be done without the approval of the West in general, and of the United States in particular. “Not a single new regime in the countries of the South can act without the approval of the United States of America,” asserted Abdelkader Mahmoudi, a political science and international relations professor at the University of Algiers. The Arab regimes, born as a result of the uprising of their people,” he explained, “care more about their legitimacy in the eyes of the West than in the eyes of their own people.” The proof is that the Islamists in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya, after their victories against the democrats, immediately addressed Westerners in order to reassure them that they would be good servants and executors. Consequently, this situation opened the door wide for Western interference. These new regimes even plan on ensuring the supremacy of the West’s geostrategic interests, to the detriment of their own national interests. Thus, it should be emphasized, the Arab Spring only provoked and led to regime changes, without actually addressing the aspirations of the people who revolted against their dictatorial regimes. “The West’s right to interfere in the internal affairs of Arab nations was established and upheld by the new leaders of the Arab peoples,” emphasized Salah Mouhoubi, a professor at the National School of [Diplomacy], who believes that the course of events in the Arab world has been guided and directed by American strategies and is tantamount to a redefinition of international relations and the establishment of a plan for a new world order.

“The United States of America supports nothing but subjugated regimes which submit to it and follow its orders to the letter,” he noted. On this subject, the political science and international relations researcher, Makhlouf Sahli, adds that, today, Arab nations find themselves held hostage to a new colonialism practiced by the West. This neo-colonialism, he claims, is due to the West’s refusal to accept the process of decolonization begun by the South in the early 1950s. Hence, the West has developed new forms of colonization and new colonial practices — for example, the right and responsibility to intervene in order to protect civilians, the promotion of democracy and human rights … Using these alibis, the West has interfered in the affairs of several countries. “The Iraq war is a perfect example of the direct and indirect implications of this neo-colonialism in the Arab world,” he said, “which also indicates that the West has redefined a new world order in order to preserve its strategic interests.” According to Sahli, these interests aim to guarantee and consolidate the supremacy of the West — of the North over the South.

Sahli argues that NATO’s intervention in Libya — in the name of protecting civilians — and its threats to intervene in Syria demonstrate the direct interference of the West in the Arab world. He added, “The right of intervention has become an important parameter of the new world order. NATO operated outside of any legal framework.”

This, he adds, has already been seen in France’s interventions in Rwanda and Burma and in the United States’ interventions in Iraq, Darfur and Somalia. Ultimately, this means that the concept of the right to intervene has been further refined and exploited by the U.S. in order to ensure the regulation of international relations in accordance with American unilateralism.