"Arab monarchies are running on borrowed time & are in worst straits than a decade ago"

[Le Monde/Diplo] "...This paradox (that international conflict can bolster the stabilisation of democratic politics at the domestic level) is quite novel in modern Middle East history. In the past, systemic battles pitted the West and its Arab allies against ideological coalitions framed as destructive and subversive to the region (the communist threat posed by Nasser and Brezhnev, Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolutionary creed, Bin Laden’s jihadist campaign). The current regional alignment is far more nuanced. Even at its peak, no outside actor could frame the Arab Spring as a coherent ideological flood associated with any evil empire, opposing superpower or radical organisation. It grew as an indigenous force before becoming entangled in geopolitics.The confrontation between Sunni and Shia will be crucial to the future. However much it may be manipulated from outside, it is a clash which is likely to multiply the fault lines and cloud the horizon of the Arab Spring. ..."