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© Mondoweiss
When the Arab spring started gathering momentum the US tried to take the "right side of the history". In reality it meant its agreement to support the forces that opposed the authoritarian leaders in the Maghreb countries and the Middle East. Meanwhile, the Americans did not take into account the fact that many of those rulers had been Washington's allies for many years. The outcome of that policy is quite sad: Islamists strengthened their influence on the region, while the US reputation in the Arab world was destroyed.

Egypt is the largest country of the Arab world. It is not surprising that the change of the regime in that specific country became the central event of the Arab Spring. During the three years that past since the first protests the power in Egypt has changed hands several times.

The Americans acknowledged each new regime as legitimate, easily forgetting its ties to the previous leadership in Egypt. Below is the commentary of Prof. Georgy Mirsky, chief researcher at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

"First they supported the revolutionary forces. Then when the counterrevolution took place, they supported the counterrevolutionary forces. They instantly acknowledged the new authorities led by Marshal El-Sisi who is about to be elected president. They put their bet on those who in the near future will determine the situation in Egypt".

Such policy coming from Washington appears to be only pragmatic. However, it has some minuses. Specifically, many people in the Arab world noticed how easily the US betrayed their long-time and faithful ally Hosni Mubarak. Below is the commentary of Evgeniy Satanovsky, president of the institute of the Middle East.

"The US image in the Arab world is on the one hand very low and on the other very high. Nobody trusts America. There is a saying in the Arab world: "It is dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be its friend is twice as dangerous". In that sense, the betrayal of Mubarak only once again demonstrated to everyone who loved him and who hated him that the US can betray any of its allies in a second".

In general the results of the Arab Spring look quite sad for the US. On the one hand authoritarian rulers who had stayed in power for many years were removed in that region. But they were replaced not by pro-Western liberals, but by Islamists. Due to the actions of the Western countries, Libya practically ceased to exist as one state. Meanwhile from the arsenals of Muamar Gaddafi who was ousted and killed a lot of modern weapons, including portable air defense missile systems got into the hands of radicals. Evgeniy Satanovsky talks about the other consequences of Washington's support of the Arab Spring.

"The spread of radical Islamism - political and terrorist - became widespread. In addition, terrorism became global. For example, today representatives of the Afghani Taliban along with the Libyan terrorists take part in the civil war in Libya. And finally, the organizers of the Arab Spring from the Persian Gulf have got into a deathly fight with each other: one the one side there is Qatar that supports the Muslim Brotherhood, on the other - Saudi Arabia and its allies. That greatly damaged the US position in the region".

Syria should be mentioned separately. The Arab Spring also hit that country. But in Syria the protest did not lead to a change of regime, but set off a bloody civil war that with the time turned into a religious war. As in other cases, the US supported the rebels. But soon it became clear that a real Jihad international is fighting against Bashar al Assad. As a result, the Americans found themselves in a situation when they don't want to support the Islamists, but neither can they officially admit that Assad's regime is a "lesser evil". While commenting on such a situation the Prince of Bahrain Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa stated that the US conducted a "changing and reactionary" external policy, due to which it could soon lose its influence among the Arab countries.