The current transformation in the Arab world offers new opportunities for rebuilding Arab-west relations. The challenge for American and EU policymakers is to construct a new framework to replace a failed paradigm that was based on support for authoritarian regimes and "democratic exceptionalism" in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

They must move beyond policies that equated protection of their national interests with the stability of regimes and were driven more by fear of the unknown than support for western principles of self-determination, democracy and human rights. This policy, while attractive to authoritarian allies and their entrenched elites, fed anti-Americanism and anti-westernism, fears of western intervention, invasion, occupation and dependency.

Gallup's report, Egypt from Tahrir to Transition, offers important insights for Arab-west relations, discrediting the old conventional wisdom that authoritarian regimes are a necessary bulwark against the triumph of Islamists, "other Irans" and imposition of Islamic states.

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