Damascus, A Domino Too Far?

The Mideast's True Despots Hang On

It’s so very tempting to embrace the idea that this could be the Middle East’s 1989 – and by that I mean the 1989 experienced in Eastern Europe, not Beijing. Tunisia begets Egypt; Egypt begets…

Tempting, but not quite convincing. The Middle East dominoes are all so different, as if plucked from separate sets. Mubarak’s Egypt is a squishy sort of authoritarianism, an ethnically cohesive nation at peace with its neighbors and host to civil society activism that would have long been extinguished in the less nuanced dictatorships of the region.

And …