History of human civilization knows great number and variety of social-political breakdowns – palace and military coups, popular urban and rural uprisings, bourgeois-democratic, proletarian and other revolutions, both of local and global nature that one way or another substantially affected future fate of certain countries, regions and even continents.

Geopolitical processes of late XX – early XXI century had begotten the new breed – the so called “colored” (also cunningly known as “velvet”) revolutions; public uprisings skillfully managed by intelligence services of concerned superpowers and generously sponsored by various Western funds and organizations that inevitably lead to the downfall of quite legitimate, yet not necessarily (by the Western standards) democratic regimes. More so, it targets the countries that for the sake of upholding their national interests and preserving their cultural and historical identity aim to conduct independent foreign and domestic policy. In the meantime the public “lashing” (vivid example: input of Western countries in toppling and savage murder of Gaddafi in Libya) is immediate.

Prerequisites for internal political destabilization are of systematic nature and constitute interconnected latent crisis in social-economic and intra national relations, degradation of the system of life support, security and culture. The aforementioned factors culminate in stagnation of domestic political life, radicalization of public consciousness and undermining of state institutions. Usually, detonators for social-political eruption are electoral campaigns and unpopular government actions that lead to ambiguous assessment by the political opposition and respective electorate.

It was quite adeptly applied during postmodernist revolutions in Serbia (“bulldozer revolution” of 2000), Georgia (“rose revolution” of 2003), Ukraine (“orange revolution” of 2004), Kyrgyzstan (“tulip revolution” of 2005), and during the last two years in Tunis, Libya and Egypt. Moreover, it is occurring on the backdrop of significant changes and consolidation of geopolitical forces in the Arab Orient, manifested in growing involvement of regional and extra-regional states – Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is vividly embodied by the recent developments in Syria.

As far as scenarios and mechanisms are concerned, they are practically identical – unpopular actions of the government, allegations of electoral fraud, active usage of the internet for mobilizing the masses (given that there is a displeased stratum in every society), sabotage against the law enforcement officials, calls for retaliation in case of inevitable losses on the part of the demonstrators and etc. The developments are accompanied by grandiloquent “democratic demagogy” of newly emerged political loudmouths. More so, new political forces that gain power are not only distant from Western democratic values but at times are representatives of the very “oriental despotism” (Libya, Egypt). Trending feature of the political life in the countries with “victorious democracy” is the rise of influence of Islamic parties that ascended to power having capitalized on democratic procedures.

According to experience of the past decade, outcomes of the “colored” revolutions are the loss of territory (Serbia, Georgia), permanent internal instability and economic collapse, mass impoverishment of population, dictatorship of local oligarchs, and growing dependence on patron states.

In general, series of such “colored revolutions” in several countries on the post soviet space and Arab world have contributed to new geopolitical reality with long reaching consequences for not only the countries concerned. Metastasis of the “Arab spring” has already started to permeate neighboring Arab states that fall short of democratic standards. In the long run, strengthening radicalization of the Islamic regimes in the countries engulfed by the “Arab spring” will provide the West with the “card blanche” for “ultimate settlement” of the issue of geopolitical and geo-economic hegemony in the Greater Middle East by means of embedding their own “sons of bitches” after each “colored revolution”.

Dr. Parvin Darabadi,

Professor, Chair of International Relations of the Baku State University

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