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Perspectives
Last Updated: 26th January 2012
Perspectives
Author: IISS
Publication: Strategic Survey, 2011
This was a year in which the pace of history quickened. Revolutionary fervour suddenly seized the Arab world. Dictators were toppled by fearless and determined street protests, and more leaders were threatened with the same fate. Just as at the end of the Cold War, decades-old certainties crumbled along with corrupt regimes and their oppressive security agencies. There were no certainties at all about what would follow.
The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, followed by the descent of Libya, Syria and Yemen into varying degrees of civil war, were not the only momentous events of the year to mid-2011.
In Japan, more than 15,000 people were killed by an earthquake and tsunami. Even for a stoic country in which earthquakes are a constant fact of life, the devastation was hard to take. The tsunami also caused the most serious nuclear accident since that at Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986, prompting Germany to plan to close all its nuclear power plants.
Elsewhere, the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis continued to endanger the global economy, as many Western governments struggled with high debts and slow economic growth. Ireland and Portugal joined Greece in receiving financial bailouts to tide them over debt problems.
Purchase access to this article here: Perspectives, Strategic Survey, 2011
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