In the Arab world, the Europeans eventually left, but the sectarian and tribal schisms they fueled remained. In my professional travels over the decades, I had found no other region to rival the Arab world in its utter stagnation. The scattershot nature of the Arab Spring makes it hard to provide a single answer. But with the Arab Spring, that old playbook suddenly didn’t work anymore. Part 2 is primarily devoted to the American invasion of Iraq, and to how it laid the groundwork for the Arab Spring revolts.

Source: New York Times August 11, 2016 04:08 UTC