What the West calls the Arab Spring is actually a sociopolitical eruption in the Arab world resulting from the total failure of all the Arab states to create a unifying national narrative and establish modern egalitarian polities. The Arab states have had 90 years to find commonality in the mosaic of ethnic, national, and religious groups in each country and build political, social, and economic cooperation between them. But instead of seeking what is unifying, and constructing an egalitarian society that mobilizes its resources to defeat backwardness and improve the economy, the elites have attempted through Arab nationalism and/or Islam to impose a unity that has always left parts of the population outside the majority community. The 90 years since the Arab states were established have been fraught with discord between the different communities, political and economic discrimination, uprisings, military coups, subversion, and conflicts between the states themselves. These conflicts have levied at least 5 million fatalities and many millions of wounded and refugees.