In all the political obituaries I’ve seen written about Nicolas Sarkozy, about what he did right and wrong, his once most prominent foreign policy initiative, the Union for the Mediterranean, has never featured one way or the other. Despite the Arab Spring, despite France’s lead role in the Libyan conflict, the UfM has been remarkably invisible in a year that has been tumultuous for the southern Mediterranean.

… public diplomacy – directly engaging civil society – has a more salient place than before- Ranier Fsadni

It’s also almost exactly a year since President Barack Obama gave a keynote speech outlining a new architecture for US policy towards the Middle East. The policy reflected the times: as the conflicts in Libya and Yemen were prolonged, as uprisings were clearly contained in places like Algeria and Bahrain, some commentators spoke of a torrid Arab summer that was to follow the Arab Spring.

So, while Mr Obama made sure he conveyed that the US would continue to safeguard its interests in the region, meaning it would not withdraw its support from certain regimes, he also made it clear that it would be difficult for US interests to be protected if things remained the same. He recognised a new Middle East, requiring new forms of diplomacy and engagement.

Even while he was speaking, a spate of books were being written in the hope of being the first to make sense of the events, to find structure and stable direction in what appeared to be fluid and unstable. It may be too soon. But two of the books that have reached my desk – Hamid Dabashi’s The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism (Zed) and Mark Lynch’s The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolution of the New Middle East (PublicAffairs) – have helped me understand four essential points about the events.

First, the truly extraordinary nature of what took place. Remember the criticisms launched at Mr Obama for dilly-dallying over Egypt? Actually, he waited only six days before he called on Hosni Mubarak to step down. But given the pace of events, it seemed like eternity.

Even Arabs themselves took themselves by surprise. In places as disparate as Egypt and Yemen, women took an active role in the protests and their organisation ignoring the regimes’ slurs against their sexual honour. Mr Dabashi is particularly helpful in explaining their participation is a symptom of larger, overlapping structural changes: in several Arab countries, women form a significant segment of the unionised labour force.

Their participation in the uprisings did not just signal an attempt to claim public space for women. It also highlighted the working class dimension of the uprisings, often ignored in Western reporting in favour of the wired middle-class activists.

Second, there is the need for a historical perspective. Mr Lynch is clearer here. The Arab Spring, of course, did not spring out of nowhere. It certainly was not inspired by the 2009 keynote speech given by Mr Obama in Cairo, which has been largely forgotten (or remembered cynically).

The relevant background is the previous cycle of Arab struggles for liberty – those which arose in the last years of the colonial period and the years immediately following independence. Those struggles were defeated as authoritarian regimes consolidated themselves and the region itself was fractured by the winter of its own Cold War: regimes that stood for the forces of conservative reaction (the monarchies) and regimes that portrayed themselves as forces for radical social change (the “revolutionary” republics).

This perspective is important for two reasons. First, as a harsh reminder that the Arab Spring will not necessarily be successful. Second, as a reminder that the outcomes will not be the same for all states. Some will be active agents in the region. Others will be theatres of action – like Lebanon and Iraq today, Syria and Libya may follow. Others yet may become poles of influence (“swing states”), as Qatar seems to have become. In this scenario, Islamic movements are as unlikely to unite across national lines as pan-Arab movements in the past.

Third, both writers are agreed that the events have been decisive for the consolidation of a new Arab public sphere: more articulate, with greater weight on leaders’ decision-making, more aware of issues that connect them to other national publics (not just Arab publics). Which means that public diplomacy – directly engaging civil society – has a more salient place than before.

Fourth, it means that a new Middle East is taking shape that calls for significant policy changes – for the simple reason that the old policies were dovetailed for a security architecture that has changed, in some aspects, beyond recognition. Mr Dabashi spells out what it means for the global “left”, Mr Lynch for the US.

But we should be asking what it means for Europe. Its concept of the “Mediterranean” has long been a political-economic one (unlike that of the US, which views it through the Sixth Fleet’s eyes). But can that concept remain adequate in an age where the Arab public sphere includes the Gulf and where the Mediterranean powers include a Gulf state like Qatar?

ranierfsadni@europe.com