The Impact of the Arab Spring on the United States

  With the beginning of the year 2011, a new wave of change started in Tunisia, leading to what is known today as the Arab Spring. This wave of change reshaped the Middle East as we know it, changed the way revolutions happen, the people’s voice rose over the controlling regimes and took over governments, and the United States government supported this change to encourage the spread of democracy.

The United States support for democracy, with no doubt, was a good approach.  The question here is: Who are these people who are taking over governments, and how is that going to impact U.S interests?

So far, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya, had government changes where dictatorship and tyranny came to an end, and a new era of democracy started. The people in these countries practiced their rights and elected new governments and the United States supported the transition. What we can see in common here is that the majority of these newly elected governments are religious based governments, because religious groups were suppressed under dictatorships, and therefore grew very popular over time.

 Why is this a problem now?

Theocracies (such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the ruling party in Egypt) might be more lenient with extremist groups and/or these groups might feel more freedom now since the government became religious based. Extremist groups have always been against U.S interests (citizens, embassies, business, etc.) and therefore, will always seize the opportunity to attack these interests when possible. The American public support is going to react adversely to the attacks on U.S interests, and over time that is going to impact the U.S foreign policy towards the Arab Spring. 

If we look at the Causal Loop Diagram above, we can see two loops:

 In the first one, we see how the U.S Government Support for Arab nations increased while the Arab Spring intensified. The Arab Spring rise caused the Tyranny in these countries to fall, leading to the spread of Democracy. The success of Democracy led to more U.S Government Support. It is a Reinforcing loop, and it represents a mental model. The mental model did not account for who is going to be in charge in these countries post revolution.

Now if we look at the bigger picture, which is represented by the second loop, we will see that Democracy has other effects, or unintended consequences. Democracy led to Theocracy taking over (as explained earlier how religious groups became popular), leading to more tolerance for Extremist groups activity that will increase against U.S Interests, and that is going to impact the U.S Public Support for change in the Middle East, which will (over time) impact the U.S Government Support for the Arab Spring. This is a Balancing loop.