全球智库信息集成服务系统

Five years after the Arab Spring, democracy seems a distant dream in the Middle East. Arab ruling elites, royal families, militaries, security services, and some businesspeople welcome this outcome. Restoring stability, the argument goes, is more important than democracy. Many Western governments have embraced this logic as well. Threatened as a result of state failure and an accompanying terrorist upsurge, US and European officials now argue that the most urgent need in the Middle East is fighting the Islamic State and its affiliates—a fight that requires collaboration with autocratic rulers. Strengthening Arab autocrats—including, for some, even the mass murderer Bashar al-Assad—is an evil necessary to defeating the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq, and the rest of the region...

Read the full article at the Hoover Digest.