Breaking the Pact of Silence? Obama, the Arab Spring, and the Middle East

Abstract

On January 14, 2011, Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled his country following a month of public protests. This event resounded deeply throughout the Arab world. For the first time in its modern history, a leader was ousted from power by means other than a coup d’état or foreign military intervention. These revolutions posed enormous challenges for the United States because they called into question the pact of silence that Western states had implicitly signed with these regimes. The pact had simple rules: the West turned a blind eye to the nature of these regimes, which, in exchange, guaranteed at least a part of the West’s security. It is still too early to know whether this pact will disintegrate given the political uncertainty that reigns in the Arab world. However, it is unlikely to endure in its current form, since it was so closely linked to the profoundly undemocratic nature of Arab regimes. Does this mean the flipside of the Arab Spring is an American Winter of sorts?¹ Nothing could be less certain.