The European Union, NATO, and the “Arab Spring”

At the onset of 2011 an unprecedented wave of social unrest and political upheaval began to sweep across the Middle East and North Africa. Following the first demonstrations in Tunisia, and the flight of its President Ben Ali to Saudi Arabia, the wave has engulfed much of the Arab-speaking world, from Morocco to Bahrain. While some rulers have abdicated peacefully, violence has been a constant. In the majority of cases, the ruling regimes met the spontaneous, massive, and peaceful demonstrations with brutal police repression; some even called in the regular army to strike down unarmed civilians with heavy conventional weapons