In Tunisia, where the Arab Spring so unexpectedly started, the Islamist Ennahada Party took a plurality of votes in the October election.

In Morocco, Mohammed VI avoided a Ben Ali dethroning but has been pressured to begin incremental reforms. Moroccans took to the voting booths and picked the Justice and Development Party, another Islamist organization, to represent them.

The Muslim Brotherhood came just short of getting half of the initial vote in Egypt, and the Salafist Nour Party is vying for a second place finish. 

The Arab Spring is fundamentally transforming the geopolitical landscape of the world. Will American foreign policy leaders respond appropriately? If the fall of Communism were an indicator, chances are probably slim. 

The Red Scare has subsided in its entirety. While some Eastern European and Asian stalwarts have opened their countries and economies at unacceptably slow rates, the two axes of Red Power—Russia and China—have surprised the world at their willingness to liberalize.

Cross posted at Interest of the State.

As the downfall of the Gaddafi regime now looks imminent, could Yemen's government be the next to fall?

Yemen’s president Ali Abdullah Saleh has already announced that he will not run again in 2013, which, if not deposed, will have given him 33 years as top dog in Sana’a. As president, Saleh has been a staunch ally with the US in the “War on Terror.” Up until 2008, Yemen did not receive much economic or military aid. When 2009 came around, the story was different. Aid to Yemen increased to $67 million, and in 2010 to $150 million.

The huge uptick in aid was due to the newest threat in America’s “War on Terror”: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). In 2009, AQAP affiliate Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad opened fire on a military recruitment center in Little Rock. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed in his attempt to bring down a Christmas Day flight after being allowed to fly despite going through no security thanks to the C.I.A.  And most recently, there was the infamous cargo planes bomb plot that would have detonated bombs midair over Chicago.

Who would think spreading Democracy in the Middle East and North Africa could be done in the absence of the US military?  Yet that is exactly what could be happening in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Libya -- to name just a few of the countries demanding freedom from their oppressive governments. 

Ceaseless war in Afghanistan and Iraq has yielded little in the way of a functioning democracy free from corruption or America’s puppet strings. However, due to leaked US diplomatic cables from Wikileaks and a man setting himself on fire in Tunisia, the people in the nations lifted above have their autocratic leaders on the run.  Now, with new revolutions springing up all over, the US should realize our foreign empire and military might pales in comparison to the will of individuals yearning to be free. 

America should take the events in Middle East as an opportunity to reconsider our reckless foreign policy as autocrats on the payroll of the American taxpayer are pulled down. Our money cannot buy freedom for the peoples of the world and where money has failed, the blood of America’s sons and daughters is proving equally ineffective.  Many will ask what role America should have in the world if we are not to police it?  I say we, as free people, should embrace and encourage those brave enough to weather violence and demand their inalienable rights from those who have usurped them. 

Cross posted at Interest of the State.

Iran, although not an Arab nation, is not immune to the waves of anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East. Scores of Iranians took to the streets today in an act of defiance against the Islamic Republic’s theocratic government. However, government thugs were out in full force as well. Writes Farnaz Fassihi:

[A]s demonstrators’ ranks swelled, police and antiriot forces lined the streets, ordered shops to shut down and responded at times with force, according to witnesses and opposition websites, in a repeat of the official crackdown that helped snuff out months of spirited opposition rallies a year ago.

This comes only days after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticized the American-backed Mubarak regime for cracking down on protesters. Ahmadinejad called the protesters heroes -- and rightfully so. However, he only considered them so because he saw them as part of an “Islamic Awakening.” Unfortunately for him, the Iranian protests are fiercely secular as the Iranian people have seen the real consequences of living under a theocratic regime. Don’t tell him that.