Podcast produced and presented by Alex Burd

In December 2011 a Tunisian vegetable vendor set himself alight in protest at the economic policies of his country. The death of Mohamed Bouazizi would light the touch paper in Tunis and the surrounding Arab world which would see dictators toppled, wars break out and millions of people displaced in what would become known as the Arab Spring.

Many seasons have come and gone since then and Tunisia has gone on to hold its first free elections since the country’s independence in 1956. However the wider region remains in a state of severe unrest. Professor Richard Falk of Princeton University in the United States is an expert in the Middle East and has reported on the Israel-Palestine conflict for the United Nations. His new book – Chaos and Counterrevolution: The Arab Spring  (Zed Books 2015) argues that the initial optimism of 2011 has been replaced by oppressive government or brutal civil war. He spoke to me from his home in Istanbul via Skype about the major topics in the book. With the Arab Spring representing a multitude of movements in several countries we focused on a several case studies – the uprising in Egypt, the civil war in Syria and the reaction in America.

The domino fall of authoritarian regimes in the region was greeted with optimism in both the West and the Middle East, however Professor Falk believes this was misplaced, no more so than in Egypt.

Prof Richard Falk: What seemed so exciting in 2011 and was recognised as the Arab Spring especially by the mainstream media always seemed to me to be a premature celebration. That these uprisings in the Arab world which were certainly unexpected and more formidable than could have been anticipated were still not very clear in their program or their understanding of the pre-conditions of a genuinely transformative politics. For instance in Egypt the most important country in relation to the Arab world, the notion that you could transform the Egyptian political scene merely by getting rid of the hated leaders and his immediate entourage and leaving the armed forces more or less in control of the state was a naive notion.

For real change to take root Falk believes that change must be wholesale and absolute. For inspiration he thinks the current movement should look back to 1979 and the Iranian revolution.

RF:  What the Iranian revolution did achieve was a rupture with the political past which was associated with the Shah's government. But what was missing in the context of the Arab Spring is that you can't really have a rupture with the past unless you transform the bureaucracy that was operating in the in the past. In Egypt particularly with its strong political centralisation has a very strong bureaucracy and very centralised government structure. And, to depend as the uprising in Tahir square did depend on the good will of the military was a very precarious way to achieve a transition to a more inclusive and democratic political order, which was the goal of the Arab uprising.

Having not thought past the initial challenge to existing regimes the movements that make up the Arab Spring have found themselves struggling to control the vacuum left behind by the men they’ve displaced.

RF:   There were two main scenarios depending on the particular conditions in each of the principal Arab countries which existed. One was the restoration of authoritarian rule the like of which existed during the Mubarak period. And then was re-established in even more severe form by the July 2013 coup led by General Sisi. The alternative was a period of protracted conflict and chaos epitomised by the situation that emerged in 2011 in Syria but then has subsequently to Lydia and Yemen.

The West initially championed the uprisings around the Arab world. With the movement in Egypt led by a new generation of activist,