Personally I'd find it more likely that the governments will take more conservative* authoritarian approaches that make their eventual bloody overthrow that much more likely. Lebanon, Iran, Egypt, Palestine** are all showing the signs of crumbling systems and violent discontent.

* Conservative as in old in thought and fearful of change, not American Conservatism.
**I'm constantly amazed it hasn't gone up like a firecracker.

Ah, the imperious conceit of the West so that Westerners continue to slap yourselves on your backs in celebration of being right and being the one's on the right path. As if the Arab countries are 'naturally' gravitating to reforms that resemble and replicate what the West have done for themselves.

Egypt will not truly be liberated until it burns its constitution, sheds the last 100 years of Western dominion, and reinvents itself as the new heart of the Muslim world.

I find the strong opinions of social "scientists" like Prof Walt amusing.

Would a doctor of medicine with expertise in lung disease, blog and commentate strong views on the latest developments in analysis of diseases affecting the toes? Hardly.

Yet here on this blog we read first a very strong blog burp about "TUNISIA REVOLUTION WILL NOT SPREAD" and a couple of days later, after mass protests from Yemen to Algeria, Bahrein to Egypt, Jordan to Sudan, "WAS I WRONG? (answer is, of course not, I'm never wrong....)

Who on earth cares if you were right or wrong in your analysis of Arabic politics - writing as you were without the benefit of fluency in the four main languages of the Arab League states, and being in east asia or somewhere at the time of the events.

This site's potential value and contribution to informed discussion is to focus on what your expertise is presumably about: defining and aritculating a view on what is in the United States' long term strategic economic and political . military interests.

To date, the Muslim Brotherhood has not encouraged taking to the streets, and has stood aloof from the protests. Let's see what happens after Friday prayers, when protests have been planned.
Whatever comes out of these demonstrations, I would venture that the direction of foreign policy will be more independent, i.e. not so US-friendly. Gotta agree with Usama2.

Re the collapse of the Soviet Union -- it was not quite so sudden. Meetings, demonstrations, declarations, started around 1989. They consistently escalated, until 1991, when the entire house of cards fell apart. During the intermittent three years, there were consistent calls from the USA and Europe to the various republics for caution. And the USA was about the last country to formally recognize the independence of some republics. That the USA could not see the collapse coming says much about the billions wasted on the CIA and State Dept.
So Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, its a long process, but a good start has been made -- I foresee Khadaffi's Lybia and Saudi Arabia and Israel soon being the USA's only allies in the region.

Whether Walt's prediction proves accurate or not, it seems this would be a good time to engage neo-conservatives from a realist standpoint.

Bush articulated what I take to be the neo-conservative thesis after 9-11. He claimed, explicitly or implicitly, that the threat of terrorism meant we could no longer afford to just back dictatorships in the Arab world to ensure stability, but should instead pursue regime change in part with the hope of ushering in democracy across the Arab world. Remember the flurry of excitement among neo-cons around the time of the Cedar revolution?

If the right wing still believes in this idea, we should hear attacks on Hilary Clinton for her cautious support of "stability" in Egypt. We should hear right-wingers congratulating protesters from Tunisia to Yemen and calling for the US government to support them morally, politically and even militarily.

I haven't researched whether this is happening or not, but my guess is it is limited, for the very good reason that nobody is sure what these popular demonstrations might mean for US interests.

But that gives away the neo-con game right there, doesn't it? If we have to wait to discover what a grassroots campaign against repressive governments might mean for US interests before embracing it, then aren't we just realists? If Bush's vision was convincing, we would welcome these expressions of longing for self-determination immediately, on the theory that only democracy in the Arab world can stem the tide of terrorism, and that democracy is, on the face of it, can only be an intrinsic good.

Any takers for that idea should stand up right now and be counted.

The four significant languages for politics in the Arab League states are Arabic, French, Armenian and Kurdish. If in north Africa, Berber is useful but not a significant language for keeping up to speed with political developments.

Fluency in the languages of Lebanon (Arabic, French and Armenian) would assist, for example, not to make silly mistakes like Professor Walt's latest bold assertion that "Hizbullah has just formed a government in Lebanon" .

Professor Walt:

1) You're an IR scholar. You're not a CP scholar, nor an area studies scholar, nor (one of the points I raise regarding the Israel lobby work, even though I do acknowledge that you did deal with it somewhat in "Origins") an Americanist. While your commentary is, per the usual, intelligent and expansive, perhaps the best thing would be to say, "This isn't my area of expertise; hence, I'm going to leave the commentary to others, and here are those whom I recommend."

2) Related to 1), you are, I'm assuming, basing your predictions off your study for writing "Revolutions." Fair enough. We predict the future based on what we know of the past. But as you point out when asked about how a small nation could affect the foreign policy of a great power, when the school of international relations with which you are associated argues that domestic politics (for the most part) "doesn't matter," there are "exceptions." Why not just say Tunisia and Egypt may be exceptions?

3) All of the above semi-criticism notwithstanding, I think your points about social media becoming a potential antecedent condition or conditional variable regarding revolutions is an excellent one. I haven't seen much in the literature about it, and it seems to get marginalized. Perhaps you could expand upon it, or, as with policy relevant literature, exhort its virtues and ask the academy and its institutions to change the incentive structure for those who study this issue?

But this is coming from a guy who thought your riff (intentional joke/pun intended) "Please Mr. Postman" reminded him of "Silence of the Lambs."

Best
Anon_Anon