THE Arab Spring has indeed ended everywhere — with the very limited and partial exception of Tunisia — in the chaos and counter-revolution referenced in the title of this collection of blog posts on the greater Middle East by campaigning US academic Richard Falk.

That chaos is on most lurid display in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Sustained imperialist intervention, direct and indirect, has propelled all three, through measureless suffering, into a state of collapse. The future of any of these once-powerful countries as integral states must now be doubtful. Yemen, now the theatre for a sustained and savage attack by British-armed Saudi Arabia, is clearly headed in the same direction.

The poster boy for counter-revolution is Egypt’s military dictator el-Sisi, who has established a tyranny more ferocious than his predecessor Hosni Mubarak did and is now firmly tucked into the West’s breast pocket, a point which will doubtless be underlined if his planned visit to London comes off.

Falk’s take on these dramas is expert. He is a controversial figure, who served for six years as a UN rapporteur on human rights in occupied Palestine.

A clear critic of the main lines of Western policy in the Middle East — military intervention, the stimulation of sectarianism, the provocations against Iran and the oppression of Palestinians — he also tends towards 9/11 conspiracy theories and has been accused of anti-semitism. Look it up and form your own opinion if you wish.

His articles on the region are erudite but not militant. On Syria, he urges a “discussion” to replace “the dogmatic self-righteous indignation of both interventionists and anti-interventionists.” That was written in February 2014. An insistence on anti-interventionism — as dogmatic and self-righteous as needs be — could have spared Syria more than 18 months of further torment and, indeed, the consolidation of Islamic State (Isis) across much of its territory.

Falk is no prophet either. He forecasts here that Turkey’s challenges for 2015 would be dealing with the centenary of the Armenian genocide and ending its passivity on tackling global warming. In fact, Turkey has spent the year covertly supporting Isis in Syria while using purported opposition to it as a cover for attacking its own Kurdish population. Its authoritarian President Recep Erdogan has taken electoral rebuffs badly.

Confused? You’re not alone. Some on the left hope for salvation from a new generation of military-nationalist strongmen, medals jangling all the way to the bank, others from collaboration with imperialism and its local satraps. Conspiracy theories and wishful thinking abound.

Some of Falk’s well-researched pieces help cut through the fog, particularly the propaganda smokescreens around imperial policy. However, no clear programme of action for dealing with “chaos and counter-revolution” is developed.

The reality is that imperialism and its principle ideological instrument of rule in the region today — sectarianism — can only be defeated by an alliance of the secular left and nationalist forces with those Islamists committed to democracy, uniting to defend both national independence and advance the principles which animated those who fought for the Arab Spring, elected and accountable governments among them.

Review by Andrew Murray