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Middle East Revolutions Off the Rails

(Daily Beast) Christopher Dickey - As uprisings have swept through the Arab world, there's an ill-disguised hope in Washington and in European capitals that somehow everything will calm down. But as Al-Hayat columnist Raghida Dergham puts it, the Arab Spring will be followed by summer, fall - and winter. Historian David Fromkin put his finger on the essential problem in his classic history of the partition of the Middle East after World War I, A Peace to End All Peace: "The characteristic feature of the region's politics is that there is no sense of legitimacy." What we're watching right now is the painful creation of a new Middle East where, eventually, countries will be recognized as legitimate reflections of their people's national identities, and governance will have the legitimacy of popular support. As Fromkin pointed out, after the fall of the Roman empire, it took Europe more than 1,500 years, and many disastrous wars, to get that far. In the Middle East, we're probably talking decades rather than centuries. But those decades will be tough. The writer is Paris bureau chief and Middle East editor of Newsweek.
2011-04-15 00:00:00
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