Understanding the Arab Spring

The revolutionary movement in the Middle East started in January 2011 where Tunisian Bouazizi Mohamed, who set himself on fire, ensued to the revolt of his fellow citizens (Pollack 2011). Political and social frustrations led to tremendous discontent of citizens, and massive protests and social movements demanded a change of the country’s political regime. This widespread event was known as “the Arab Spring” and empowered other people in Arab countries who were not satisfied with their sociopolitical standings to revolt against government regimes. This surprising event unfolded in the world arena, which drew attention on an international level. Consequently, it became widely debated by political science scholars, and was the main point of discussion in the Kenneth Pollack’s work. The Arab Spring was attributed to cause internal crises in many Middle East countries and created tensions between those countries and the US. The US intended to defend their oil interests, though currently are unable to control the situation in these regions. In the introduction of his book, Kenneth Pollack convincingly shows his point of view about the origins of revolt, how a snowball effect differentiated among the Middle East and to what extent this issue affects external relations between US and Arab world.

The recurrent problems in the hegemony of Middle East countries led to frustration of the social sentiments. Kenneth Pollack (2011) provides some instances about inappropriate government rule and the degradation of social conditions such as educational restrictions, unemployment and massive corruption led to the weakening of the governments’ authority among the local community. Accumulated frustration led to the overthrow occurred initially in T...

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...erefore author suggests that the United States should have caveat for future action.

In conclusion, the author persuasively shows his arguments that the Arab Spring have entwined accumulated political, economic, juridical and social problems which could have happened at any time during the last few years. In retrospect, Tunisians show their discontent while people in other Arab countries share the same feelings who were no longer willing to accept their suffering from political fallacy. Kenneth Pollack supported his arguments, separately describing cases of each country’s leaders, which shows his strong argumentation. However, relations between the United States and the Middle East lack a detailed explanation, especially of how Washington would respond to the Arab countries’ behavior.

Works Cited

Pollack M. Kenneth. 2011. Understanding the Arab Awakening. 1-9.