A recent comparison by top foreign policy thinkers in the US reveals the not so pro-democratic thinking that also goes on in Washington, referring to the emancipatory movements of the Arab Spring as a improbable "worst-case scenarios."

A continuing war in Libya tarnishes the Arab revolutionary uprising, because it has subverted a democratic revolution and become a war of intervention. Two of TNI's fellows and experts on the Middle East debate the underlying causes and consequences of the Libya military intervention.