The fate of the popular insurgencies in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere in the early-mid 2000s could offer guidance or warning to the middle-east uprising of 2011 - and to western states, says Vicken Cheterian.
Israel’s political class is struggling to make sense of a crumbling Arab order and the loss of the certainties it embodied, reports Thomas O’Dwyer.
An Arab world in transformation has found France’s elite shamed by its links with the old order. A control-freak president with base political instincts offers little hope for a better policy, says Patrice de Beer.
Saudi Arabia’s ruling family is seeking to mollify discontent by spending some of its vast wealth. But that approach fails to meet the aspirations of a changing society, says Christoph Wilcke.
The crisis in Libya is confronting the United States with a new awareness of its military and political constraints, says Godfrey Hodgson.
The popular risings in the Arab world belong to a wider historical process of worldwide democratic advance. But the disastrous events of the post-9/11 decade have made it far slower and more conflictual than was needed, says Martin Shaw
The Arab democratic awakening makes China’s communist leaders nervous. But are they right to be worried, ask Kerry Brown & Cassidy Hazelbaker.
The Arab popular awakening is provoking serious concern among state and security elites across the west. But Israel’s stance is the most self-defeating of all.
A series of legislative measures in Israel will further constrain Israel’s beleaguered human-rights groups. A proposed commission to monitor their work highlights the real motive behind these efforts, say Lisa Magarrell & Iain Levine.
A hurricane of change is blowing through the Arab world. Even now, many Arab regimes are still in denial. But it also challenges the west to grasp a new political reality, says Nadim Shehadi.
The new legal case against Italy's prime minister is also a test for a divided nation at a critical stage in its history, says Geoff Andrews.
