US approaches to the Arab uprisings : international relations and democracy promotion / edited by Amentahru Wahlrab and Michael J. McNeal.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Front Cover; Author Biography; Title; Copyright; Contents; List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements; Notes on Contributors; Introduction: Contesting the Dominant Narratives of the Arab Spring; 1. Washington's Liberalist Ideological Stance and Contradictory Policies in the Middle East; Introduction; Ideology and the Liberalist Ideological Orientation; The Liberalist Ideological Orientation and the MENA Region; Conclusion; 2. Strategic or Democratic Interests?: Framing US Foreign Policy in the Middle East Uprisings; What We Know About Presidents, the Media, and Public Opinion; Expectations.

|a Findings; Alternative Explanations for Patterns in News Coverage?; Manufacturing Consent? The Media and Public Opinion; Main Lessons; 3. The Arab Spring, US Intervention in Libya, and the Lingering Politics of Rwanda Remorse; Intervention in Libya and the Ideological Role of Rwanda Remorse; Western Intervention in Rwanda: 1990-4; Making Peace With Disintervention; 4. Whither Wasatiyya? Locating Egypt's Liminal Actors, Five Years after the Uprising; Rethinking Moderation, Locating Liminality; Egypt's Islamist Liminars; Liminality, Transitional Justice, and Democracy Promotion.

5. Discourses of Democracy and Gender: How and Why Do Women's Rights Matter?; Introduction; Dual Narratives of Women as Democratic Actors; Situating Western Discourses in State and Global Power; Native Informants and the Security State in the Global South; Conclusion; 6. Justin Zongo and the Place of the "Arab Spring": Repression, Resistance, and Revolution in Egypt and Burkina Faso; Authoritarian Egypt: Contesting Socialism and Neoliberalism; Burkina Faso: Protest Culture and the Pivotal Sankara Regime; Theorizing Fear, Volition, and Constraint.

Conclusion: The Challenge of Examining Ruptured Space; 7. A Matter of Protest: The Arab Spring in Syria; Introduction; The "Hirak" in the Arab Spring; Center vs. Periphery and the Dynamic of Change; The Arab Spring: Progenitor of Democratization?; The Hirak in Syria; Narrating the Thuwwar and Ahrar; Contestation and Renewal in Revolutionary Narratives; Conclusion; 8. Making Revolutionaries out of "Safe Citizens": Sovereignty, Political Violence, and the Arab Uprisings; Introduction; The National Security State and its Need for Safe Citizens; Making Revolutionaries out of Safe Citizens.

The Sovereign State Response to Revolutionary Unsafe Citizens; The Authoritarian Attempt to Make Unsafe Citizens Safe; The US and the West Attempt to Make Unsafe Citizens Safe; Conclusion: Making Future Revolutionaries; 9. The Arab Uprisings and Twenty-First-Century Global Crises: Is There an Emerging Network of Global Dissent?; Introduction; Sketching the Beginnings of a Network of Global Resistance; "New" Social and Political Formations; New Capabilities; New Ideas and Institutions; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.