Winds off the Sahara

On January 14, the president of Tunisia fled to Saudi Arabia, ending 23 years of autocratic rule. Eleven days later, the riots in Egypt began, leading to Mubarak's resignation on February 11.

Since then, the scene painted by the nightly news has been that of a series of dominoes, falling one by one, as demonstrations have broken out in one country after another: Bahrain, Iran (Islamic but not Arab), Libya, Yemen. Together with others receiving less attention from the American press, such as Algeria, Morocco, and Jordan. Few if any of the Muslim states in the Middle East and North Africa have so far escaped at least minor demonstrations against their existing governments.

We've been warned repeatedly in recent years of the dangers of Islamic jihad, imposition of Sharia legal systems, and other fundamentalist horrors that hearken back to the seventh century. But this month's demonstrations, at least so far, have been secular demands for democratic forms of government and for a more equitable distribution of wealth. They have not been demands for more specifically Islamic governments.

All I can do is watch. I don't have much to say; certainly I have no greater insights than does the New York Times. But it does occur to me that, because the demonstrations are occurring swiftly, one after another, we've tended to lose track of the fact that we're living through a remarkable period of history. Decades from now, I suspect, students will look back on early 2011 as a crisis period in the history of the Arab peoples and of their relations with the rest of the world. This will be true whether the demonstrations lead to democracies, to new forms of secular dictatorship, or to Islamic governments such as already exists in Iran.

This past month reminds me of other eventful months, months we lived through calmly -- buying groceries, going to work, chatting with friends, watching the news with fascination but with no real insight -- only to realize later that we had drifted unknowingly through a watershed period of modern history.

I suspect, for example, that anyone who was alive and following the news in October 1956 realized only later the full extent to which his or her world had been changed forever.

The revolt in Hungary, its suppression by Soviet troops, the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt, and their retreat in the face of American anger -- all happening within one dramatic month. No one really could have anticipated it at the time, but October 1956 was the month that finally ended, in the minds of even most sympathetic Western European leftists, the Communist movement's pretense that it was anything more exalted than an instrument of Soviet foreign policy. And it was the month that ended forever the prestige of the British and French empires, making it evident to the world that British and French foreign policy would be henceforth subject to American veto.

Few foreign policy experts, and even fewer members of the general public, would have recognized the long term consequences of the events that unfolded during that three or four week period in 1956. I suspect that the events this past month in the Arab states -- events that are still unfolding -- will have equally widespread consequences, consequences that we simply cannot foresee at this time.

We live in "interesting times," as the traditional Chinese curse phrases it. I recall the urban legend that the Chinese character for "crisis" is an amalgam of those for "danger" and "opportunity." We certainly are resting on a fulcrum of crisis in today's Arab world. Let's hope the balance tips toward "opportunity."