Was the August Coup the blueprint for the Arab Spring?
Sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky says no. “The only thing the Arab Spring and the end of the USSR have in common is that they happened to involve large crowds. It’s like comparing a political rally with a football match, or the French Revolution with a rock festival.”
But Egyptian dissident and democracy fighter Saad Eddin Ibrahim says the anti-Mubarak uprising was informed by the successes as well as failures of post-Communism. “We learned quite a bit from our Soviet colleagues about how not to fall into some of the mistakes they did.”
In today’s magazine article for The National, I explore the connections between these two epochal events, and find that it is the differences between the two movements that give reasons to be optimistic about this region’s future.
A few months ago, I wrote about the early stages of the conflict in Ukraine through the lens of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. While it appears likely that the war will carry on into the foreseeable future, enough time has passed for us to make an honest assessment of each side’s relative […]
The Ukrainian Army has made dramatic strides in the last few weeks. Ukraine’s tactical commanders have outfoxed their Russian counterparts, and by issuing a feint towards the south the UA has been able to earn substantial gains in the north of their country. The impact of these efforts have been compounded by the steady stream […]
In mid-May the Irish political party, Sinn Féin, won the plurality of seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Many American readers might not fully understand the significance of Sinn Féin’s political victory- but rest assured that subjects of the United Kingdom and a wide range of political movements the world over have heard the message […]
The first wave of the Russian offensive in Ukraine has fallen short of Russian autocrat Vladmir Putin’s ambitions. Most analysts deduced that Putin had hoped to achieve a decapitation strike of the Ukrainian government- taking Kiev and replacing Ukrainian President Vladimir Zolinski with a pro-Kremlin voice. Kiev has been threatened repeatedly through the course of […]
On the weekend of March 26th, the notorious MS-13 gang went on a massive killing spree in El Salvador which left more than 70 people dead by Sunday. Even for a country where powerful gangs hold massive sway, this recent tragedy stands out considering that it was the bloodiest day on record since the civil […]
