By Michael Zantovsky

It is quite understandable that when a nation is badly governed it should develop a wish to govern itself. But a desire for independence of this kind, stemming as it does from a specific, removable cause – the evil practices of a despotic government – is bound to be short-lived. Once the circumstances giving rise to it have passed away, it languishes and what at first sight is a genuine love of liberty proves to have been merely hatred of a tyrant … (Alexis de Tocqueville, “The Old Regime and the French Revolution”).

Just like in human life, failures and false starts are as much if not more important for dealing with future challenges than the much rarer triumphs and crowning moments. The recent upheavals in the Arab world are often referred to as the “Arab Spring,” evoking reminiscences of the Spring of Nations in Europe in 1848 and of the Prague Spring of 1968. To note that both of these historic models were in fact glorious flops does in no way diminish the significance of the current events in the Middle East or the idealism and heroism of the millions of protesters participating in them.

It is hard to point to a single cause or factor that brought about the revolutions of 1848 and 2011, unless one thinks of endemic disillusionment with the powers-that-be as a cause rather than a symptom of the malaise. Political oppression, poverty, national awakening, historic wrongs and strict social stratification all played a role then and now, reinforcing one another, spreading near and far and creating a combustive atmosphere in which a single spark would lead to an explosion.

Sifting through the events of 1848, 1968 and 2011, it is equally difficult to point to a single demand or program that would unite the briefly victorious masses. In the latest instance, is it liberal democracy, an Islamic state, economic improvement, redistribution of property, or a simple requirement of dignity in life? The answer is parts of all, or perhaps none of the above. The program of the defenders of the status quo, on the other hand, is always fairly simple and easy to operationalize: It is to give up as little and to preserve as much as possible.

It is mainly because of this disparity that the protesters in Egypt, Tunisia and even more so in Yemen and Syria run the risk of losing some of their recent achievements. The process of a successful restoration or counter-revolution generally follows a standard course. It consists first of a tactical retreat when the wave of popular unrest is at its crest. Promises are mouthed about reforms, constitutions and bright futures.

The second phase is infiltration. People who have mouthed the promises use them as legitimization to shed their all-too-often unsavory pasts and join the seemingly victorious rebels. There then comes a suppression or elimination of all dissent marketed as a highly desirable return – now that the revolution has won – to law and order and productive activity under the newspeak headline of “normalization.” Finally, it is time for the purges, or worse.

Such was the history of both 1848 and 1968. In the absence of clearly defined goals against which progress or the lack thereof can be measured, people will gradually grow tired and drop off one by one as they feel that their vague aspirations have been achieved or – on the contrary – have become unattainable.

This does not necessarily mean that the history of the Arab Spring will follow the same course. Parallels are only that. The best model of a cat, as Arturo Rosenblueth used to say, is another cat, specially the same cat. Much will still depend on the ability of the protest leaders to present a program that is general enough to agree upon, easy to comprehend and realistic to implement and that promises some real improvement in real time. “Back to Europe” was such a program that in one form or another did the trick for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe after the revolutions of 1989. It also demonstrated the slight advantage we had in being able to point at something that really existed, that we were once a part of, and that was demonstrably working not just as a past ideal but also as a blueprint for the present and a sound point of departure for the future. In the case of the Arab Spring, such a model seems to be harder to find.

Recourse to past certainties is a natural but not necessarily helpful response to situations of social upheaval, conflicting claims and a significant degree of insecurity. In the short run, the rediscovery of glorious, often mythological histories helped to establish the identities of a number of European nations before, during and after the revolts of 1848, but also planted seeds of future nationalistic resentments and conflicts that came back to haunt us with a terrible vengeance in the following century. The Islamic option in the current upheavals offers similar temptations and similar risks.

Even if the current upheavals end up badly, however, it does not follow that the entire exercise was in vain. Some of the accomplishments, be they the abolition of serfdom in the Europe of 1848 or the emergence of real and virtual social networks of the Arab spring, will survive and take root. And the bitter fruit of defeat goes to seed in the form of broken dreams discarded, false hopes dispelled, illusions shattered. When the next confrontation comes, the objectives are more clearly defined and the mood more realistic. People will have learned from their failures and mistakes. The tyrants, on the other hand, in the immortal words of Talleyrand, will have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

Michael Zantovsky is the ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United Kingdom, a former ambassador to Israel and the United States, a former Czech senator and a former spokesman for President Vaclav Havel. He writes in his personal rather than official capacity. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons-international.org, an online newsletter.