ABSTRACT
The Tunisian protests triggered by Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation on 17 December 2010, led to a spiral of revolutions and rebellions across North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf.1 For a short period of time, there was hope that the peoples were finally empowered to get rid of their autocratic rulers who had prevented political and economic progress in the
Arab world for a long period of time. A few years later, these hopes had somehow been shattered. Tunisia is still in the midst of a difficult transition process. Egypt is now ruled by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi who was elected following a military coup against the Muslim Brotherhood who governed the country for a short time. Libya has turned into a failing state whereby large parts of the territory are outside the control of the central government and the country suffers from insecurity and instability. The Syrian civil war is still ongoing, but the rebels have lost significant ground to the Assad regime. In Bahrain, the monarchy has reasserted itself. The ‘Arabellions’2 have presented quite a few challenges to external
actors. While it took everybody by surprise, particularly Western actors quickly realized that they had to walk a fine line between their principled support for human rights and democracy, on the one hand, and their quest for security and stability in the region, on the other. Moreover, their experiences in Libya and, to a greater extent, Iraq, have had many Western powers (the US, in particular) question their abilities to adequately adapt to and intervene in a region that is rapidly changing. ‘The ebbing of “western” political and economic influence places great strain on the military and security dimensions of relationships that have for so long underpinned the structure and balance of regional power’ (Held and Ulrichsen 2014). This special issue examines the balancing act by external actors between
their desire for stability, on the one hand, and their normative principles toward human rights and democracy, on the other. In particular, we compare the action (and inaction) of the European Union (EU) with other international and regional players, including the United States, Russia, Turkey and Israel. The contributions assess the response of these actors to the Arabellions events and analyse changes in their approaches to the Arab region. The changes taking place in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
provide an excellent testing ground for the role of external actors who seek to promote democracy, security and stability, ensure access to natural resources or develop strong trade ties. By ‘external’, we mean states and regional organizations, which are not themselves subject to protests and opposition during the Arabellions. We focus on three actors outside the region (the US, EU and Russia) and one regional actor (Israel), with Turkey being a case in between. The five actors differ in their regime type and actorness, which allows us to explore how important these two variables are in accounting for what goals the actors pursue, which instruments they employ and how consistent and coherent their foreign policies are. The special issue tries to accomplish two tasks. The first task is empirical
stocktaking: How have the EU and other international as well as regional players reacted to the Arabellions? In this context, we address two sub-questions:
How have external actors assessed the Arabellions and what role did they see for themselves in this context?
