About this ebook
The ‘winners’ are leaders with strategic understanding of the region and a scheme for exploiting the chaos–Putin, Netanyahu and Iran’s Qasem Soleimani–along with, strikingly, the very institution of Arab monarchy. The ‘losers’ are the Arab autocrats who were deposed in Egypt, Libya and Yemen. The Palestinians, seemingly bypassed by the dynamic of Arab revolution, are also losers. So are the American presidents—Bush 43 and Obama—whose disastrous strategic decision-making catalyzed Arab state fragmentation and opened the gates of the Levant to Iran’s drive for regional hegemony. Western democratic society suffered too—from waves of Islamist terrorism and the effects of Muslim migration generated at least in part by Arab chaos. Only in the case of two leaders was the jury still out by 2019. The effects of the high-risk policies of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohamed bin Salman and the strategically incoherent policies of US President Trump remain to be seen.
Winners and Losers in the ‘Arab Spring’ takes a global look at a massive regional upheaval that is far from over. It is an essential read for everybody interested in the Arab revolutions, Middle East and international strategic affairs.
About the author
Yossi Alpher is a former Mossad official and served in the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence. He was director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies (today INSS) at Tel Aviv University. Now retired, he researches and writes about Middle East strategic issues. His book Periphery: Israel’s Search for Middle East Allies (2015), won two awards in Israel for best book in the security field.
