Arab Spring and Intellectual Intervention in Syria: Were the Revolutions Pro-Democracy Movements

Abstract

The Arab Spring was a collective anti-government protest that swept the region of West Asia. The protests led to the collapse of multiple authoritarian regimes in quick succession, namely Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and Syria. Scholars and academics in the West were quick to raise concerns about human rights violations and labelled the protests as a pro-democracy movement against the authoritarian regimes. However, this classification of the revolutions is problematic. It represents a form of Intellectual Intervention by the West. Intellectual Intervention is based on Eurocentrism. Intellectual intervention portrays non-Western uprisings as pro-democracy movements. It influences how these uprisings are perceived in International Politics and lends legitimacy to actions taken by Western governments in the international system. The Syrian civil war began in 2011 following arrests of teenagers for criticising the then Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The conflict continued for 13 years and collapsed in 2024. This paper examines the Syrian conflict to determine whether the protests were truly pro-democracy movements or whether such classifications are a form of Intellectual Intervention to justify military intervention.