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Book Review: The Arab Uprising by Marc Lynch

This is the third in a series of reviews of new books on Middle Eastern affairs. We asked Dr. Gail Weigl, an APN volunteer and a professor of art history, to review Marc Lynch's book about the so-called "Arab Spring". Following is Gail's review. 

Marc Lynch, The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the Middle East (New York: Public Affairs, 2012). 209 pages. $26.99

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This exceptionally cogent discussion provides even the most ignorant of readers a thoroughly comprehensible overview of the historical and contemporary forces that shaped the popular uprisings in the Middle East, and their implications for the region and American policy.

More a survey than a deep analysis, the author's grasp of a formidable a range of variables--from those operating in Egypt or Libya, to those in Tunisia or Bahrain--speaks to his certain knowledge of the region, as well as to his ear for the voices of the "Arab Street."

His stated goal, to provide a "pragmatic but theoretically informed framework" for understanding the uprisings that have convulsed the Arab Middle East inevitably leads, however, to a somewhat repetitious invocation of causes, which comes dangerously close to reductivism.

Thus, despite his warnings against generalizing and stereotyping an Arab public that spans dozens of countries and national variables, and his cautions that there is no "essence" of Islam or of Arab culture, Lynch time and again champions the notion that the uprisings bound disparate protests within "a shared identity and common narrative." His explanation for this is one of the leitmotifs of the book: That protestors, while focusing on domestic change, were simultaneously developing a pan-Arab identity. While careful not to overstate its importance, Lynch credits the emergence of a pan-Arab consciousness to the new social media, which he believes shaped the avant garde leaders of protest movements and instigated for the first time in the region a cross-national consciousness that helped to foment a trans-national identity.

A second, if no less prominent leitmotif is the author's conviction that whatever the internal or external stresses on the various countries experiencing the upheavals, the pattern essentially is the same: they all were and are the necessary outcome of corruption and violence. In this lurks a potential difficulty. Definitions that encompass all variables are by definition not useful. If everything is Zen, then what is Zen? Thus, despite the comprehensive and nuanced summaries of the causes and effects of the uprisings in countries as disparate as Egypt and Bahrain, or Libya and Jordan, Lynch returns again and again to domestic disillusionment with economic stagnation, official repression, and corruption leading to small popular protests, in the first instance sparked by young middle class urban youth familiar with information technology. The protest then is followed either by ineffective or insufficient government reforms and increased government repression as efforts for reform stalled or failed, resulting in widening protests fueled by state-sponsored or sanctioned violence against its own citizens, and spread by the creative use of social media, capturing both regional and international attention and thereby generating increased support.

Lynch's experience and knowledge of the region, much less his good faith, cannot be doubted. His views essentially must be taken as well-reasoned and well-observed. Yet the autocratic Arab regimes that have fallen or reformed in the wake of the uprisings, and even those which have not, such as Syria and Bahrain, were and are not unique in their management of the mechanisms of repression, their methods of silencing the popular voice. What is and was unique is the energy and impact of social media, a point to which Lynch often returns, beginning with the catalytic uprising in Tunisia, where he tells us that as horrifying as was the self-immolation of Bouazizi, it would have had as little impact as previous protests, had not the creative use of social media spread "images and reports of the brutality," fostering "an unusually attentive international response once the protests had begun to capture the regional imagination."

Again and again, Lynch focuses on the "real significance of the new Arab public sphere in unifying political space," a significance he believes has been missed by political scientists, policy analysts and other stakeholders in the region.

While offering the thesis that autocratic repression ultimately failed because violence no longer silenced the Arab street, he effectively underplays the unique circumstances of the countries comprising the Arab world, but at the same time focuses on them. These are summarized throughout the text, but ultimately are wrapped in a notion of a "new" Arab public. He asserts, "There is strong evidence for the power of momentum and regional diffusion in the heady initial days of 2011. The simultaneous outbreak of protests in multiple countries, regardless of antecedent conditions, simply makes no sense otherwise."

He follows this assertion with another characteristic trope: summaries of how these upheavals also revealed the limits of change. This he does throughout, first reporting events, embedding them in the unique history of the individual states, then discussing that work against too easy a resolution of conflict or too hopeful a prediction of revolutionary success, as in the sub-chapter "Stalled Revolutions." In addition to debunking the conventional wisdom, this approach helps to leaven his own proclivities to champion, for example, the power of social media. Thus, while appropriately recognizing the seminal role of social media, he does not neglect to criticize powerful players such as al-Jazeera, nor to note that as social media gained in power, that power could undermine as well as aid the ideals of revolutionary forces.

One of the strongest contributions of this approach is the recognition throughout that those who make and/or co-opt revolutions do not necessarily control the narrative, nor do those who follow after, that indeed, the tensions accompanying control of the narrative are "a crucial part of the emerging Arab politics."  Witness, for example, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the wake of a revolution begun by liberal secular elites. This even-handed approach is paralleled by Lynch's discussions of internal political factors controlling the West's freedom to impact the revolutions in Libya and Syria.

As we watch events continue to unfold in Syria, how prophetic is Lynch's assertion that "it took exceptionally extraordinary courage to begin protesting in Assad's Syria." Again, however, after making his point, he smoothly bypasses remaining questions about the "external activists" who "had to take a leading role in Syria." This illustrates what seems a bias to this reader, namely, in his effort to define and support the Arab street, and despite his careful consideration of tensions and strains within the various movements, both pre-and-post revolution, he uniformly and unconditionally assumes integrity of motive.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Lynch's assertion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a primary concern and motivator of the Arab street. His is the objective voice of the reporter, but as a sympathizer with the revolutionary aims of each of the Arab uprisings, it is often unclear whether his pro-Palestinian stance is a summary of popular Arab opinion, or of his own view, albeit the two are not necessarily contradictory. 

Finally, in assessing the impact of the changing face of the Middle East on the United States, Lynch offers a set of policy prescriptions which take into account not only US foreign policy blunders such as the invasion of Iraq, but also the degree to which the Palestinian question historically has taken a direction that obscures the reality on the ground, where it has always been a major concern, despite appearances to the contrary in the wake of official inattention or dissimulation.