by Walter Onubogu

Created on: December 11, 2011   Last Updated: December 14, 2011

The democratic revolution in Egypt will have a significant effect across the Middle East because of the following reasons:

People across the Middle East have largely grown accustomed to the cynical machinations of autocratic rule across the Middle East, encompassing countries as different as Morocco and Iran. The truth of the matter is that, amid the 1950's, 1960's or even 1970's, Arab Nationalism held sway across much of the region (excluding the non-Arab Farsi-speaking Persians of Iran who have their own national legacy and traditions to look to), influencing not only the common Arab man's yearning and aspiration for a unity among Arab nations but also a desire to see an end to post-colonialism, national independence and sovereignty, and social and economic resurgence. Aspirations unfortunately remained just that and never were translated by those who governed the Arab Street into realities.

With decolonization on its way and Britain and France either willingly or reluctantly relinquishing formal control, i.e  Algerian War of Independence, or  the case of  Egypt (after the debacle of the Suez Crises of 1956 where Britain, France, Israel all attacked the country and initially wanted to internationalize the conflict and force Egypt's nationalist Ruler Colonel Nasser to allow the continued presence of British troops in the Canal Zone and force him to repeal the nationalization of foreign-owned assets of the Suez Canal company), Arab people felt finally a new era of progress was being heralded into existence.

What followed can hardly be described as a success. In its wake, one authoritarian regime after the other through force came into existence. Amid the Cold War and the American Soviet rivalry for world supremacy (1945-1989), expecting or wanting such regimes to have democratic credentials was not on the agenda. Instead what mattered was a calculation on the part of the West (i.e USA, UK, France etc) that valued tyrannical (somewhat western-minded if not nationalist) autocrats as the best insurance policy- bulwark against either Communism or potential Islamic fundamentalism.

This insurance policy however yielded little tangible results for the oppressed Arab masses. They came to identify their rulers as nothing more than the puppets of the West, and this combined with years of economic stagnation, state repression, lack of political freedoms helped fuel uprisings that eventually

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