Measuring the Revolutionary Wave
Some commentators have taken to calling this moment in North Africa and the Middle East the “Arab Spring,” an awakening that might permanently cripple autocracy in the Middle East. But, while the contagion effect seems clear, there are clear limits to how far the awakening can spread.
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NEW YORK – A prediction three months ago that popular protests would soon topple a dictatorship in Tunisia, sweep Hosni Mubarak from power in Egypt, provoke civil war in Muammar el-Qaddafi’s Libya, and rattle regimes from Morocco to Yemen would have drawn serious skepticism. We knew that the tinder was dry, but we could never know how or when, exactly, it would combust. Now that it has, how far can the flames spread?