The Arab revolution of 2011 forces a change of focus

After what happens in Tunisia and Egypt, whatever the outcome, there is a change. A page is turned. While it is very difficult to predict what the Arab world will be like in ten days or a year (democracy or authoritarianism, pluralism or radicalism), there is a change that is taking place and that Europeans must take into account. And no one knows where it will stop. The vague departure from Tunis will perhaps end up in Tehran...

Islam no longer only equals terrorism but also democracy

First of all, it is the end of ten years of a paradigm, resulting from the attacks of 2001, between the Arab world, Islam and terrorism. The Tunisian example shows that it is quite easy to switch from an authoritarian regime to a regime on the way to democracy, without falling into extreme Islamism. We see that in Egypt, there is a potential for opposition forces, democrats, which makes it possible to avoid being confronted with the rule of "Me or Chaos" as repeated by Mubarak but many others before him. There is undoubtedly a democratic model to be built between the democracy of Athenian and Christian inspiration and the Arab and Islamic democracy. But the field is now open.

The rebalancing between East and South

It is also for Europe the end of twenty years when it concentrated more towards the East than towards the South. Well Named. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the USSR, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, then the enlargements of 2004 and 2007 to 10 Eastern European countries and the stabilization of the Balkans led to a real "torticollis" for the Europe turned more towards the east than the south. A whole part of Europe that had nothing to do with what was happening south of a Vienna-Venice-Lisbon line will have to worry about it. And the EU will carry out a revision of its policy and its instruments no doubt, but above all a change of outlook. It is perhaps due to a certain relaunch of the "Union for the Mediterranean" process which, after a fanfare start, experienced a noticeable sluggishness.

Peace in the Middle East requires other paths

We thus notice that the question of peace between Israel and Palestine is not the whole question of the Middle East, that it is neither the cause nor the consequence of the "revolution" which is taking place. . On the other hand, it obliges more than ever - whatever the evolution in the surroundings - the Israeli government to seek support from the Palestinians. And vice versa. If democratic governments come to power in the Arab world, Israel will no longer have a monopoly on democracy in the region. The government will therefore have to abandon its radicalism, which will be obsolete tomorrow. A peaceful transition of sorts.

Is George Bush's goal about to be achieved

Ironically, one could say that George Bush's idea of ​​reshaping the Greater Middle East stretching from Algeria to Iran is underway. But without him and not in the form his initiator dreamed of. It is not the export of American-style democracy or Western intervention in Iraq that is entirely the cause of this movement, but the evolution of the Arab world itself and globalization in the facts and the society.