Chill winds blow for Arab spring

But if it's half-time, or perhaps quarter-time to use an AFL analogy, the opposing team has scored a lot of points and liberal reform is well behind. The international consequences, so far, are not very pleasant either.

Take the countries one by one. Last week saw a mass demonstration in Cairo by many thousands of Islamists who celebrated the presence of known extremists with long records of calling for jihad and violence.

This week, Islamists helped the army clear out some of the few remaining secular protesters from Tahrir Square. There are signs of an alliance building between the Islamists and the army, though it may be that the army remains a critical force for stability as Egypt develops politically.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian economy is flowing rapidly down the toilet. Tourism is dead and a prodigious capital flight is under way. The protesters, the Islamists and even the army all have reasons, substantial or tactical, to demonise business people. But when you demonise business you guarantee the exodus of wealth. On some estimates, by the year's end, Egypt will be unable to pay for its imports or feed its people.

And just to cheer you up, the latest polls show the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots would score spectacularly well in a parliamentary election, although it's true that these polls vary pretty widely. An an even more extreme Salafaist group of parties is also scoring solid backing. My Egyptian friends consistently informed me that the public moderation of the Islamists during the Egyptian uprising was temporary, tactical and fraudulent.

In Tunisia, where it all began, the economy has also tanked, and the hitherto most socially liberal of Arab states has seen a rise of intolerant Islamism.

In Libya, we are in the midst of a horrible stalemate. The only two tyrants to fall so far are those in Egypt and Tunisia, the two countries most well-disposed toward the US. In Libya, the grotesque Muammar Gadaffi clings to power. While NATO has intervened militarily in Libya, it has done so in an exceptionally cack-handed way.

Prepared to rain lethal bombs on Gaddafi's forces, and give full diplomatic recognition to Libya's rebels, it has not provided them with tank-busting weapons, suitable anti-mine equipment, artillery or much else. A faction of the rebels murdered their military commander, General Abdel Fattah Younis, a key Gaddafi lieutenant who had defected. Therefore the longer the stalemate the less likely we are to get a clean transition to a decent government.

Canberra, especially Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, was among the strongest proponents of intervention. However, Rudd's analysis and prescription remain justified. He urged the strongest UN resolution wording, and he also read the resolution in the most expansive fashion. No one favours Western ground forces, but intervention could still have been much more effective.

In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has killed thousands of people. The enduring courage of the Syrian protesters is astonishing. The Syrian economy, which unlike Libya has no oil to speak of, is also going down the drain.

In Yemen, the future looks very bloody. The old regime has not been toppled and the local al-Qa'ida affiliate is still full of fight.

In Bahrain, protesters representing a Shi'ite majority under Sunni rule have been crushed.

In Saudi Arabia, the unreconstructed absolute monarchy has spent money on social programs to bribe its people, but has actually tightened censorship and political control.

In Lebanon, where for a time a pro-Western coalition ruled, the government is now dominated by Hezbollah.

Many of the elements we once took comfort from in the Arab Spring have changed. It's true that al-Qa'ida, Hezbollah and Iran were taken by surprise by the Arab uprisings, and neither controlled nor much influenced them. But these forces are well and truly in the game now.

The character of the Arab Spring is changing partly as a result. What about some other international consequences? For Israel, two are obvious. The first is that it is now surely only the certifiably insane who would argue that Israel is central to the dysfunction and conflict within the Arab world. The Arab Spring, and the grievances that fuelled it, had nothing to do with Israel.

The second consequence for Israel is that it cannot possibly consider peace treaties -- with its neighbouring states or with the Palestinians -- until the shape of the new Middle East is clear, certainly until it knows whether its peace with Egypt will hold.

The Arab Spring had some alarming consequences too for China. It shows that economic growth does not guarantee stability (namely Egypt and Tunisia), nor does efficient, brutal Stalinism (namely Syria). It also showed that paranoid nationalism and a focus on phony external enemies (namely the entire Arab world and Israel) does not guarantee stability either. And it reinforced Beijing's belief that the social media are dangerous if not controlled because they can lead to civic mobilisation. So the result of the Arab Spring in China has been a renewed wave of extremely severe internal repression.

And the Arab Spring has not been very good for Washington either. The Obama administration has been marginal during the entire process. Its comic mis-readings of Egypt and repeated contradictions and day-late adjustments of position -- then Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak went from member of the family, to stabilising force overseeing reform, to someone who should step down, to a war criminal, in a few short weeks -- had only one benefit. It showed Washington was not calling the shots.

But the failure to support early and strongly the democrats of Syria, like the earlier failure to support Iran's democrats, was inexplicable. One reason for pessimism about Arab democratisation is that the Arab world, unlike eastern Europe in 1989, does not have a bunch of rich, culturally familiar neighbours who can show them how democracy is done and provide resources.

We all know that the US is stretched at the moment, but it still needs to be in the game in the Middle East. One of the biggest challenges is to reform the Arab world's profoundly dysfunctional political culture of paranoia and conspiracy theories, most of them centred on Jews and Israel. You can't quickly build a democratic culture with the public discourse saturated in poison.

There are heroic Arab democrats trying to move their societies forward to some place more normal, more representative and with much better governance. They're not getting much help from anybody, and right now, they're not winning.