Arab Spring was the moment when, in regions dominated by authoritarian regimes, the people voice has been heard and in the Orient was spoken about democracy more frequently than ever. The consequences of this generous movement are somewhat various: some dictators and authoritarian leaders were swept away; Libyan Muammar Gaddafi and Yemeni Ali Abdullah Saleh were killed, Tunisian Zine El Abidine Ben Ali died in exile and Egyptian president Horni Mubarak was jailed, died and was buried with military honors. Few years after the first wave of the Arab Spring, a second wave came, and Sudanese Omar Al Bashir and Algerian Abdelaziz Bouteflika have lost the power; in Iraq and Lebanon, there were anti-system movements, when entire political class was contested because its incompetence and generalized corruption. Tunisia seamed to succeed on the path of democracy and in other countries the atmosphere was more permissive as it was a decade ago.
The costs of Arab Spring have although been enormous: civil wars in Lybia, SYria and Yemen, irruption of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (in a war which expanded beyond of "caliphate" borders, from Occident, till West Africa and Central Asia), consolidation of authoritarian state in Egypt, where the regime resulted from the revolt of "free officers", with superficial reform, remained in power. As concerned the second wave, the results are yet again not encouraging: armies kept and consolidated its stronghold in Algeria and Sudan and regimes are almost the same in Iraq and Lebanon.
As a result, someone would say that Arab Spring was on the whole a failure, especially if refers to the people aspirations and claims, who have protested in the streets of the Orient. And the causes of this failure are numerous: harsh reaction of disputed regimes, inadequate reactions of foreign powers, the fact that dissatisfied masses were not homogenous (pro-democracy activists, Islamic militants, regimes' dissidents, national minorities' exponents, tribes seeking greater influence, so on... Another cause could be connected to the moment when Arab Spring took place: perhaps it happened too early and too sudden, and someone could have speculated that a softer change, during a whole generation, would account for an easier and less brutal transition to democracy.
If the Arab Spring represented the voice of people, the new decennia in Orient begins with the leaders' voice. They decided to formalize relations with Israel, even taking the risk of a violent internal opposition. Leaders as Saudi crown prince, Muhammad Ben Selman, and the actual leader of United Arab Emirates, Muhammad Bin Zayed, have launched processes of modernization of their societies. The dilemma is that such reformist impulses, from upside to downside, are not new in the Middle East: secular regimes have tried it in Algeria and Iraq, with the support of their armies, and they have been contested and overthrown by the Arab Spring. The Iranian shah, Muhammed Reza Pahlavi, alsotried it, but the final result was the Islamic Revolution and the instauration of an oppressive regime sponsoring terrorism all over the world. And Mustafa Kemal Ataturk also tried it in Turkey, but the 100 years later result is, instead of an Occidental democracy, an authoritarian state, led by an Islamic party, who assumes progressively the Ottoman legacy that confronted Ataturk.
The reset of Orient in the last months could announce a new beginning. On paper and in speeches the future seems bright. But it remains to be seen whether this reset represents a real start of a new Orient or simply means a return to the past.