Have any Western governments officially conceded that becoming involved in the Arab Spring was a mistake?

Question

The Arab Spring has in hindsight been a complete disaster for the region. Syria is in a massive civil war. Libya effectively split apart into several state. Egypt is experiencing constant turmoil. And other countries in the region are likewise ready to blow up at any time.

Did any Western government officially concede that this is the case and apologize for participating in the Arab Spring events? Or does the West still maintain that it was a successful step in the fight towards democratic rule?

Answer 1

The most important flaw in the premise is that Western invention had a significant impact on the "Arab Spring". This is not the case.

The civil war in Syria was neither started nor mainly influenced by the West. Military actions mostly focused on the Islamic State, and this only after it emerged several years after the beginning of the civil war. Other global players, especially Russia and Iran, had a far more important contribution on the war than Western states.

The split of Libya was also imminent. While in this case a contribution indeed came from the West (effectively the only one, that is), it also happened after the civil war had already begun, and it is very questionable if the removal of Ghaddafi did actually change much. Now Libya is in a state of a disabled government; else it probably would have been more like Syria, with a dictator that lost control over large parts of the country. But the West could never prevent the civil war.

In Egypt, the West practically was absent. Mubarak was ousted, Mursi was elected and ousted, and Al-Sisi returned the country to a military dictatorship as it was before. The turmoil was there before the rebellion, and it is still there, especially because nothing has changed fundamentally. It is difficult to see any Western responsibility here.

This also holds for other countries that are "ready to blow up at any time". Note that the Arab Spring was not the reason for the instability of the countries, but the instability of the countries was the reason for the Arab Spring.

So there is not much to apologize for.

Answer 2

To be completely cynical, who says that it was a mistake - for the west? Simply as a matter of geopolitics, it seems better to have your enemies fighting amongst themselves, than to have them united against you.

So if we take Libya, for example, we had an entrenched dictator who used the country's oil wealth to finance various jihadist movements, and used the mechanism of the state to carry out a number of attacks. Now the parts of Libya are too busy fighting amongst themselves to do much in the way of attacking others. Which seems like an improvement if you're one of those others, no?