Source URL (retrieved on Mar 1, 2011): http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/burying-pan-arabism-4956

 

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Burying Pan-Arabism

March 1, 2011

Leon Hadar

 

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The uprisings in the Arab World have generated two competing narratives in Washington. The first has the making of a Middle Eastern End-of-History prototype: The Arab embrace of liberal democracy is another chapter in the historical epoch evolving since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
The competing narrative—a derivative of the Clash-of-Civilizations paradigm—raises the specter of political Islamist radicalization along the lines of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.