Muammar Gone Daffy

Up until now, the events of the Middle East has made this time an exciting one in which to be alive. In scenes reminiscent of the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe, Islamic nations are casting off their old dictators and making steps toward democratic government. The presidents of Tunisia and Egypt have already been forced out, and despite attempts to suppress their people, the king of Bahrain and the president of Yemen are feeling more than a little bit of pressure. Not to mention the mullahs of Iran. While some people in the region - the Egyptians, most certainly - are ready to form governments based on democratic principles, some countries could easily slip into greater authoritarianism under new governments. They could resemble the old banana republics of Latin America more than the emerging post-Communist regimes of eastern Europe.

No one knows which way Libya is going. In fact, thanks to its legendary dictator, Muammar El-Qaddafi - in power since 1969 - Libya could blaze its own self-destructive path. The flaky Qaddafi, who became synonymous with terrorism in the 1980s with his support of commando attacks in Europe and his backing of the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing - is holding onto power by any means necessary, even employing the Libyan air force to mow down demonstrators. (Two senior mutineering air force pilots flew their fighter jets to the nearby island nation of Malta and requested political asylum after defying orders to bomb protesters.) Qaddafi, 68, made a bizarre appearance on Libyan television to insist that he remains firmly in power, and in fact he did not look at all well. No one seems to know who's in charge over there, and oil traders have responded accordingly, sending prices upward.

Other countries in the region undergoing unrest may become democratic republics or military dictatorships when all is said and done, but Libya is looking more and more likely to become after Qaddafi a society no one will be able to define or recognize.

Pan Arab Revolt

The recent mass uprisings in Tunisia, Yemen, and, more dramatically, Egypt would be exciting if they weren't so scary. The idea of common people rising up against totalitarian governments sounds so wonderful, but the most recent reports out of Egypt depict a country in chaos and turmoil. The demonstrations have been spontaneous, with little leadership in the truest sense of the word, and the Muslim Brotherhood - hardly an organization devoted to expansion of democracy - is in a position to take control of the resistance. This isn't the Berlin Wall coming down; this is order breaking down, and the White House knows it. If Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak were to fall, no one knows who or what would take his place, or how it would influence (likely adversely) the rest of the Middle East - especially Israel.

If Egypt, with its poverty and bad economy, is in a precarious state, then Yemen is far worse off. Yemen is a country once divided by colonialism and then the Cold War. The north achieved independence from Turkey in 1918 and was a monarchy until 1962, and an oligarchic republic after that. A communist republic in the south replaced in 1967 the British protectorate that had been established there in the nineteenth century, centered around the port city of Aden. Dirt poor, with few resources of its own, and an active Islamic movement among its population, Yemen has long been a source of unrest and instability. Al-Qaeda is active here by all accounts, and it was al-Qaeda that was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000. Yemen's post-Cold War unification in 1990 (under the northern government) was marked with much less fanfare than the reunification of Germany that same year, and alas, the Yemeni government's often futile attempts to integrate the country economically haven't received much attention either. To be fair, some progress has been made in the past twenty years, with some economic development that reduced the national budget deficit's share of the country's gross domestic product. But progress comes very slowly in this part of the world.

Tunisia will likely have the easiest transition from authoritarianism, with the president having been deposed and with the chief of the Tunisian army siding with the protesters with the promise to "defend the revolution." Also, it has a vibrant middle class. Egypt is too unpredictable, and with the arrest of Egyptian Nobel laureate Mohammed El-Baradei after his return to the country and the shutting down of Internet services, the situation is likely reaching a tipping point. Yemen could pose a danger for U.S. naval operations in the Middle East, given its proximity to Mandab Strait separating the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden (and, by extension, the Arabian Sea). And I haven't even mentioned how an Egyptian revolt could produce another Suez Canal crisis that could humble the United States in the same way that the 1956 crisis reduced Great Britain and France to second-rate powers practically overnight.

No, this is not as thrilling as the Cold War's end twenty years ago. But given the violent overthrow of Ceausescu in Romania in 1989, fears of a reunified and renewed Germany, and the Soviet crackdown in Lithuania in January 1991 and the attempted internal overthrow of Gorbachev that August (before the Soviet Union was dissolved that December), there were times when that march to freedom also traveled treacherous terrain.