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If one looks closely at Tunisian society on the eve of independence in 1956, it is rather striking – there was most definitely what is referred to today as a highly developed `civil society’, with participation of most sectors of society in the political movement that led to independence. But that civil society was first seriously weakened by the country’s first president, Habib Bourguiba who saw it as a threat to his personal power. Then it was smothered by Ben Ali — or more accurately, Ben Ali tried to snuff it out. And yet despite everything, under the surface it has continued – until it erupted once again full force after the death of Mohammed Bouazzizi.

This is why US policy in the Arab world has always struck me as fundamentally untenable in the long-run. Autocracies,