Is the ‘Arab spring’ over? Like Soviet troops bringing ‘fraternal’ assistance to the beleaguered rulers of communist Prague in 1968, the King of Saudi Arabia has sent his soldiers to crush democratic opposition to his fellow King of Bahrain. In Egypt, the army remains in power as it has ever since Nasser mounted his military coup in 1952. One ageing Air Marshall has been forced into retreat but senior officers are firmly in charge. In Libya, another colonel rejoices as world attention switch to Japan. Like Europe and the US in the early 1990s unable to move and uncertain on the legality of using force to stop Milosevic as his murder machine was unleashed in Sarajevo and Srebrenica, the democratic world does not know how to stop Gaddafi.

The European Union’s much-vaunted foreign and security policy lies in ruin as a German chancellor opts for neutrality rather than face down her nation’s energy-supplier, Russia, and demand UN action. The great prime ministers of Nato and EU nations meet in Brussels and leave waving bits of paper in the form of empty communiqués from their gathering. Europe is close to becoming Absurdistan as it is the non-democratic Arab League that calls for a No Fly Zone, three weeks after Lord Owen first made his appeal.

The US dare not send planes to bomb another Muslim country after Iraq and Afghanistan. Italy’s prime minister is so involved in business deals with Gaddafi and his family that use of Italian airbases is ruled out. Spain sends a submarine to stand off the Libyan coast but Benghazi will not be saved by torpedoes.

William Hague, like Tory foreign secretaries unable to deal with Milosevic in Bosnia, wrings his hands in helplessness. Tory Britain has isolated itself from political partners in the EU and so when David Cameron does seek robust action he finds that Tory disdain for EU partnership leaves Britain with declining influence.

On 17th February, Hague spoke in the Commons to answer my urgent question on Bahrain. He dismissed my appeal to suspend arms sales and review policy. Tory and Labour MP alike counselled caution and called for stability. An important moment of history came and went and a political class that has turned its back on serious international engagement was found wanting. The debacles of Cameron’s arms sales trip to the region, the blunder over evacuation from Libya or the fiasco of the SAS mission all followed as a government became prisoner not master of events. Hague’s 2010 announcement that the Foreign Office would do trade and not much else looks more and more hollow. The much-vaunted National Security Council has met. Did anyone notice?

International law as defined by the United Nations means whatever a communist dictatorship in Bejing decides it will mean. And the last thing the Chinese want is that their citizens start to use the word ‘Jasmine’ or learn to copy the Tunisians or Egyptians.

In Morocco, the King sets up a committee to revise the constitution. But it will meet slowly and for many Moroccans, it is the same old couscous – promises of reform that never materialise. So they gathered in Casablanca on Sunday night but were savagely beaten by the police as they sought refuge in the offices of the Socialist party which maintains a tenuous existence.

Later this month, Prince Charles will travel to Morocco with the Duchess of Cornwall. Will he meet Kahdija Ryadi, who heads the Moroccan Human Rights Association and dismisses her King’s speech and says that Moroccans ‘will continue to be treated as subjects, not as citizens?’

When the crisis broke out there were excited comparisons with the post-1989 freedoms in East Europe after the end of Sovietism. What we are seeing is more like Prague in 1968 or perhaps the crushing of the spring-time of nations as continental Europe’s hope for liberal democracy in 1848 ran into the sand. But freedom’s banner once unfurled cannot be hauled down and will continue to fly against the wind from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Indian Ocean. For Cameron and Hague this is Britain unfinest hour.

Photo: Collin David Anderson