Revisiting the 2011 Arab Spring; New Perspectives and the International Community Response to Crises in the 21st Century

Abstract

The Arab Spring of 2011 was a phenomenal event that shook the world and took most policymakers, international actors, and world leaders by surprise. A spontaneous event that started with a man in Tunisia spread like wildfire throughout the Arab world and burst into uncontrollable outrage against the formerly accepted repressive rule and established monarchy in the Middle East. This paper revisited the circumstance that surrounds the uprising and present dimensions by employing thoughts from concepts like globalization, civil-military relations and finally argued a counterfactual analysis of the response to the crises from the international community. Why would the same trend of events produce different outcomes? Why did the US and Russia react with varying degrees of pressure? Is the African Union a toothless bulldog as widely touted? These questions are central to the development of the historical analysis of this paper in an effort to provide thought-provoking answers.