[LINK] "This isn't 1989"

[rfmcdonald]

At Al-Jazeera Haroon Moghul argues that the Arab world--the Middle East generally--ia much too fragmented to manage revolutionary change in the way that Europe did the 1980s and 1990s. If there's no there there, then how can there enjoy a lasting stability?

When Eastern Europe became free, the democratic West cut any debate around its future short. NATO was waiting to welcome Eastern Europeans with open arms; they would also be fast tracked into the European Union if they made the right reforms. In a matter of years, they would begin to rejoin the continent they were parted from in 1945. Peace, security, and prosperity. What wasn't there to like?

This larger security architecture, and the institutions that went with it, immediately provided Eastern Europe a political, economic, and even cultural direction to move in. So effective was this security architecture that it not only (albeit belatedly) ended the bloodiest post-1989 conflict, when Serb nationalists attempted to absorb Bosnia; more than that, the promise of EU membership even lured Serbia in from the cold.

But, as Gaddafi's forces continue to pound his people, it is clear that no such salvation awaits an uncertain Arab world. The European Union is loath to admit even deeply Westernised Turkey to its ranks, and there is no reason it could or should consider Arab membership. And Arab and Muslim intergovernmental organisations offer no shared political consensus.

The Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the second-largest intergovernmental organisation in the world, features governments ranging from dictatorships (Uzbekistan) to democracies (Senegal); the OIC thus cannot offer a vision for a common or attractive future.

Even the Arab League's call for a Libyan no-fly zone can do no more than insist. The League has no means to put force behind its words, and its infrequent unanimity has proven unsurprisingly susceptible to dissolution. And why would the League's mostly authoritarian members endorse a democratic movement in a region clearly not immune to a populist domino effect?

The hard truth is this: There is no credible regional institution to tackle this worrying crisis. As much as the hearts and minds of people across the region are with the Libyan people, there is no plausible, credible, or sustainable way to intervene to help them.

Since Moghul's essay came online there has been a NATO intervention on behalf of the rebels, but that just underlines the continued weakness and fragmentation of the Arab world--even Egypt's military, as Noel noted isn't capable.

Go, read.