Introduction lebanon and the arab uprisings: In the eye of the hurricane

This introduction presents an over view of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides an overview of the developments in Lebanon before and after the Arab uprisings. While Lebanon managed to absorb the shocks of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt as well as other countries, the uprising in Syria posed severe challenges to Lebanon’s political, security, economic and humanitarian stability. The book aims at deepening the understanding of the aforementioned fallouts of the Arab uprisings and the spillover of the war in Syria. It provides insights about Lebanon’s external affairs, including the country’s foreign policy attempt of “dissociation” towards the Arab uprisings in general, and regarding the development of the Syrian, US, and European (EU) Lebanese relations in particular. The movement came into existence before the beginning of the Arab revolutions and saw the regional uprisings as a potential catalyst for fundamental change in Lebanon.