The Arab Uprisings and The Struggle Of Soft Powers In The Middle East

The popular uprisings starting from Tunisia in December 2010 and spreading quickly to other Arab countries brought the most extensive social and administrative changes to the Arab World, since the end of the Second World War. These unpredictable and spontaneous upheavals in the Arab World, began with people taking to the streets to express their anger and disappointment with the status quo, surprised not only the effective political actors in the region such as United States, Russia and European Union but also all the world. -Murat Aktaş- The recent global financial and economic crisis has wreaked havoc across the globe and it is in that context that the Arab uprisings have occurred. The question becomes whether the global situation was a main cause of those recent events. It is beyond question that the global capitalist system is in a profound crisis. Capitalist decline manifests itself in two major ways. -İbrahim G. Aoude- The European financial crisis coupled with the Arab Spring marked the decline of the European Union. The Anglosaxons were able through instigated uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt to overthrow in Africa the two pillars of Sarkozy's building of the Union for the Mediterranean, i.e. Ben Ali and Mubarak obliged Sarkozy to bombard his other friend, Gaddafi, in return for a small piece of the Libyan energy cake. -Dimitri Kitsikis- Russia and West were actually surprised by the events developing in the Middle East and for the most part they shared consent on how to approach each Arab country problems as they unfolded, except in the case of Syria and Libya. The events surrounding the Arab Spring had forced countries to take sides.