All revolutions have their own distinct trajectories, and any attempt to locate what is happening in the Middle East within the framework of what has gone before will get us only so far. Still, history has some useful lessons. The first is, when revolutions happen, tolerate messiness. No revolution moves neatly from the streets to a peaceful, stable, new dispensation.
Europe has a special responsibility here. The E.U. is the Arab Middle East's close neighbor and natural market. (In 2009, Egypt's trade with the E.U. was more than three times as valuable as that with the U.S.) If you're Tunisian, Algerian or Moroccan, you want to emigrate to Paris, not Pittsburgh. These are soccer societies, not baseball ones.
True, Europe has found it awfully hard to make a grand gesture to its Muslim neighbors. It has vacillated on E.U. membership for Turkey. And it's closing its doors to immigrants. But three years ago, French President Nicolas Sarkozy made much of the benefits that would come from a Mediterranean community that linked north and south. Like many of his ideas, it was a bit grandiose, and it has so far got little traction within the rest of the E.U. That doesn't mean it was wrong.
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