Arab Spring violence - Cure may be worse than the disease

EVEN when the Arab Spring was in its faltering infancy, concerns were raised about who or what would replace the regimes toppled by popular, relatively peaceful revolution.

Recent events suggest those concerns were justified and that in some instances tyrants have been replaced by the tyranny of a rudderless vacuum.

The fear that relatively secular dictators, however unattractive, might be replaced by radical, aggressive Islamists was real and cannot yet be fully discounted.