The Arab uprising : the unfinished revolutions of the new Middle East /

Lynch (George Washington Univ.) offers an incisive policy analysis, based partly on his access to the Obama administration. A well-known blogger and author of the well-regarded Voices of the New Arab Public (CH, May'06, 43-5534), Lynch is an excellent guide to the most important development in the 21st-century Middle East: the Arab Spring of 2011. He neatly compares its seismic shifts to the "Arab cold war" of the 1950s, a previous "revolutionary wave" that divided the region between supporters and opponents of Nasser's Arab nationalism and contributed to turbulence for US foreign policy. After three chapters of background, the pace quickens; Lynch describes the wave of domestic uprisings across much of the Arab world, starting first in Egypt and then spreading across the region. Dubbing these "hashtag revolutions," he describes how Twitter helped activists stage their protests. Lynch also devotes attention to counterrevolutionary forces and the problems of civil war and intervention in Libya and Syria. His concluding chapter offers a sympathetic but critical reading of the Obama administration's pragmatic, case-by-case response to the uprisings. He recommends better public diplomacy, more Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, greater understanding of Islamist movements, and humbler ambitions. Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels. S. Waalkes Malone University

Lynch, a political scientist and advisor to the Obama administration, analyzes the recent and ongoing political changes taking place in the Middle East and ventures some predictions about what may come. Chronicling the changes and emphasizing correlations among specific events across Arab states (e.g., the inspiration protesting Egyptians found in the events that took place in Tunisia immediately prior), Lynch notes how those changes have upended the traditional power structures in the region. Although the Arab Spring can be seen as the third wave of uprisings that began around 2000 in response to the second Palestinian Intifada, the upheavals in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere, which began in 2010 and continue to this day, are actually, Lynch says, the very beginning of what he suggests will be a continuing struggle for power among regional actors within a political arena that is more integrated across the Arab public sphere than ever before. The challenge for the U.S., Lynch suggests, will be to make the tough policy choices necessary to play a constructive role in shaping the Arab uprisings. Timely, informative, and recommended for current events and regional history collections.--Driscoll, Brendan Copyright 2010 Booklist

George Washington University political scientist Lynch (Voices of the New Arab Public) offers a nuanced, insightful analysis of the Arab insurrections, with ample historical context. Though the book opens with an almost catastrophic dearth of storytelling, Lynch hits his stride as he details Middle Eastern activists' roles in the uprisings that spread across the region, as well as the fall of three Arab leaders within one year: President Ben Ali of Tunisia, President Hosni Mubarak or Egypt, and Libyan ruler Moammar Qaddafi. Tracing the 2011 protests to the Arab cold war of the 1950s and '60s, Lynch vigorously warns against the assumption that recent uprisings will yield instant peace. In addition, he persuasively disputes that social media (Twitter, Facebook) catalyzed the protests, claiming instead that they were spurred by a history of political turmoil and aided by Al Jazeera, which has formed a unified Arab voice. Acknowledging that the Obama administration faced a precarious dilemma in choosing whether and when to intervene, Lynch furnishes a shrewd critique of Obama's quick response in Libya and low profile in the other Arab uprisings, admonishing the administration to deliver on its promises. In this thought-provoking book, Lynch earns his right to implore U.S. citizens to trust Middle Eastern countries to reshape their political space. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Voices of the New Arab Public, 2005, etc.), who has been following recent events closely (he suggests that he may have coined the term "Arab Spring" in a January 2011 article), reexamines important precedents in mass uprisings that took place in convulsive waves during the Arab Cold War of the 1950s, and were brutally suppressed. Before the 1967 Six-Day War ruptured Arab solidarity, the pan-Arab movement instigated by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser pushed for Arab unity, galvanizing mass demonstrations in the streets and helping to destabilize regimes in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Algeria and Tunisia. Yet Arab unity proved intractable, and the region was soon riddled by military coups and divided loyalties between the revolutionary and the counterrevolutionary--the latter being those nations aligned with the West. The result of popular mobilization, Lynch writes, was the establishment of a system of authoritarian controls that paralyzed the Arab populace for the next 40 years and that are only now unraveling: "The tight control over information, careful management of public political opinion, and massive coup-proof' security services were all designed to blunt the power of transnational radical appeals." Moreover, lessons then gained about intervention in regional affairs should also be heeded as today's interested observers--e.g., the United States and Saudi Arabia, among others--choose which nations to back. Lynch also examines the key role initially played by the Al-Jazeera network in coverage of the Tunisia uprising, keenly watched by the Egyptians in convincing them their own efforts could be successful. A timely survey of complex historical and current events.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.