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The Arab Spring Did America a Big Favor

(Foreign Policy) Aaron David Miller - In taking to the streets, Arabs did something for America that we'd never be able to do for ourselves: Break the devil's bargain we cut with Arab authoritarians decades ago. We got some Arab-Israeli peace agreements, continued access to Arab oil, sold a lot of military hardware, and procured stability. But it proved a false stability. These arrangements were made with regimes that were out of touch with their publics and simply couldn't endure. At some point the same forces of change that were transforming the rest of the world were bound to visit the Middle East as well. There was no way the U.S. would ever have pushed meaningful reform, let alone broken our ties with the authoritarians, unless the street did it for us. But we shouldn't kid ourselves: The process will be long and messy and may well not turn out the way we want.
2012-04-05 00:00:00
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