America Is Failing

The Arab Spring, a harvest of rage — how much has been destroyed or rebuilt, how many lives were stolen and how deeply was the peace broken?

I and the many others watching anxiously are asking similar questions about the Arab Spring’s consequences, questions deriving from a dissatisfaction with what has happened. But which side has actually been the most damaged by the Arab Spring’s results so far?

No doubt the revolution against subjugation and tyranny has garnered the benefits, despite the scope of destruction and death that afflicted the countries where the Spring broke out in blood, oppression, displacement and sectarianism. However, the most important result is that it has brought the role of the great colonial powers in the region to the smallest it’s been in decades, pushing them to change their policies to fit the new laws.

The great political truth that political analysts continue to avoid discussing is the new political polarity the Arab Spring gave rise to, demonstrated by the success of political Islam in gaining power over all the countries the Spring rained down on. They were moved by them, raised them up and elected the Islamists; the peak of this polarization occurred in Egypt with the Islamists’ general victory in the Egyptian legislative elections and Morsi’s victorious assumption of the presidency of the largest Arab republic. Two victories — they will strengthen the concept of the polarity and will allow Arab political powers, and all sects, to open channels with the Egyptian Arab Republic, and find in it an impartial alternative to the political opposition of American and Western colonialists, which revolve in the orbit of the Arabs’ first enemy: “Israel.”

The culture of cooperation with America and the West in the shadow of a unipolar world was at its strongest in the years following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. All the Enlightened, activists and advocates for freedom and democracy collaborated in one way or another with official or semi-official Western organizations; we find that these American and other organizations have global agendas in all sectors — “social, political and economic” — and are implementing long-term projects that permeate Middle Eastern life.

Now, after Islamist political forces have taken the reins of authority in every country that saw an Arab Spring and fair elections, liberation forces will naturally head to Egypt to encourage a new system of political values and revolutionary enlightenment against colonialism, which had a significant role in the previous injustice and insecurity — colonialism that still plans, and even implements, political programs aimed at increasing chaos and the unraveling of the fabric of Arab society, so as to ensure Israeli superiority and protect Western interests.

Without a doubt, the role of America and the West will diminish, and we’ll see a change in Western policies in the region. We can’t ignore the size of the challenge the Arab Spring has posed to America and its allies after the initial results of the Arab revolutions and the fair elections in the Arab world. We can look forward to campaigns of Western interference in the region; there may be military strategies, or more mobilization and burdensome alliances, aimed at isolating the Islamists and foiling their chances to unite the Arabs against global injustice and tyranny.

It won’t be long before we see Arab political, social and economic powers ally themselves again and gather around Egypt and its new leadership. We can’t ignore the rise of this new pole in global politics, or ignore its most important feature — that this pole is very far from the politics of America, Israel and Europe.