Michael Hudson on Arab uprisings

When my mentor, Michael Hudson, speaks I listen:  "The surprising demise of authoritarian rulers in Tunisia and Egypt and the sustained wave of popular protest that has shaken regimes in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria (not to mention the tremors that have occurred in Morocco, Jordan and Oman) requires political scientists and other analysts to reexamine some of the conventional wisdom about Arab and Middle East politics. (1) The “durability of authoritarianism”. How valid now is the argument that mukhabarat states can keep several steps ahead of societal opposition through better access to and use of new technologies of information and repression? (2) Democratization is an inappropriate goal and impossible to achieve in the Arab world. Were the so-called “demo-crazy” analysts really so blinded by their presumed liberal preferences? (3); Populations are passive—anaesthetized by the opium of the rentier state or bowed down by the burdens of daily life or cowed by fear of the mukhabarat. How then to explain the extraordinary massive popular protests? (4) Arab nationalism is dead; people are reverting to their primordial affiliations. But how then to explain the so-called “contagion effect” of the Tunisian and Egyptian upheavals? Facebook alone did not cause them. And (5) the Middle East regional system is essentially stable; states still are the prime units; the regional balance of power is stable; and the system is still encased in American hegemony. But how then to explain the strategic setback suffered by the United States and Washington’s apparent inability to manipulate the new situation." (thanks "Ibn Rushd")