[quote=Vortex]
Time to revive the thread.Speaking of the Arab spring and such I've been thinking very similar events happened in the prologue to WWI do you think a similar thing may happen? I'm not saying it will and I'm hoping it doesn't so humanity can prove that it's better then cavemen throwing rocks at each other (or nukes in our case, and are slightly more deadly) but I'm simply asking for your thoughts.
[/quote]

No, it's somewhat of an irresponsible association to draw. We're trained to believe that history is a repeating cycle, so when, say, Russia invades Crimea, I could say 'Just like Germany did to Austria, huh.' Immediately you're thinking of Putin in relation to Hitler, which is unfair (most of the time). 

If anything, Arab Spring is going to shuffle the dictator deck a bit. This happened a ton in Latin America, and nothing really came of it, outside the countries themselves..... Of course there are countries (not the US, really) which rely on ME oil imports, so the stakes are a bit higher, but everyone has an embassy now, they're working on it. 

[quote=Goldmarble]Secondly, this Arab Spring...is it really tied in any way to the drawdown of American forces, or is it something that has been coming for years and just happened to coincide with the same time frame?[/quote]

A little from column A, a little from column B. My general rule is that everything influences everything. For all we plebs know, the drawdown happened because upper leadership was worried about Arab Spring happening, instead of the other way around. Logistically speaking though, it's always easier to overfly Turkey when you have a air base in Turkey. I can't imagine that the non-state actors were oblivious to our strategic changes -- if our withdrawal *didn't* have a major impact then they're idiots, but I give them a bit more credit than that.