Arab Spring Needs a Mini-Marshall Plan

Two years to the day since protesters toppled Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, triggering revolts across the Arab world, euphoria has clearly turned to disappointment. Building Arab democracies with open economies is proving much harder than was, perhaps naively, anticipated.

Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have become trapped in a vicious circle in which instability hampers economic recovery, while lack of growth and jobs in turn fuels instability. In all three countries, failure to break the circle this year could mean ceding the field to radical Islamists who reject modernity, or lapsing back into the corrupt crony-state systems that so many people risked their lives to escape.