Revolts and the Military in the Arab Spring

Popular Uprisings and the Politics of Repression

Sean Burns

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781784538934
• eBook ISBN: 9781786723192
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Through detailed exploration of events in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Syria and Yemen, Sean Burns here breaks down the concept of professionalism within the armed forces into its component parts and demonstrates how variation in military structures determines their behaviour. In so doing, and by emphasising historical context and drawing on a wide range of political science theory, Burns sheds fresh light onto the ways in which military structure affects the potential for democratic transition or the course of civil war. With this book he presented a wide-ranging study of the Middle East which provides key tools to understanding the opportunities for democratisation, both during the Arab Spring and beyond, and which is therefore essential reading for anyone working on the Middle East, popular uprisings and the politics of repression.

1

The Men with Guns

According to Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle, even years after the transitions from authoritarian rule in Africa began, ‘the fate of democracy in the sub-Saharan continent continued to rest in the hands of the men with guns.’¹ Understanding the behavior of the military is key to studying democratization, but the lack of variation in previous regional waves of democratic uprisings has made it difficult to make firm predictions about military behavior. The revolutions and democratization literature on Latin America showed a key role for the military, but there was not sufficient structural variation in the region’s militaries to fully explain differences in behavior: most countries had either a dictatorial military with some level of institutionalization or a dictator backed up by a patrimonially controlled military. Under certain circumstances, a ruling military could open up space for democratization,² and patrimonial militaries were prone to collapse and could pave the way for revolution.³ However, South American countries, for all their variations, were mostly former settler colonies, with similar types of internal conflict and levels of US influence, resulting in relatively similar military structures. As such, they were studied intently, but it was hard to separate militaries by structure and thus predict their behavior.

Nor did the Eastern European revolutions of 1989–91 provide a good testing ground for theories of military structure. For the most part, the Soviet satellite regimes had Soviet-style military structures imposed from outside. These were largely professional militaries and, for the most part, were not major actors in the uprisings. Communist Party General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signaled that the Soviet military would not defend the Eastern European regimes, and in only two cases did their national militaries play a major or obvious role in the transitions: Romania, where Ceausescu refused to step down and was killed by his armed forces; and Russia itself, where Soviet military leaders attempted a coup to prevent the breakup of the USSR but were unable to get their rank-and-file to oblige. Africa did not prove a good place to study military structure either because, according to Bratton and van de Walle, ‘none of these armies […] acted as a unified force […] Soldiers’ alliances went unexpectedly either way’; they were largely a ‘wild card in the game of regime transition.’⁴

Nonetheless, the vast literature existing on democratization and revolution has made some key observations. It is generally true that the more a military identifies with protesters – either through ethnicity, sect, ideology, or social class – the less likely soldiers and junior officers will be to shoot. The more important a military is in an authoritarian regime – in ruling position, material benefits and responsibility for internal repression and brutality – the less likely it is to surrender power or abandon the regime. Militaries are more likely to experience defections or collapse if they have not been paid, have been involved in a damaging conflict, or have lost international support. Those that have legal status as defenders of a constitution against internal enemies are more likely to coup. Militaries that are institutionalized and have separate interests and command structures from a regime are more likely to abandon it. Many military officers view the internal cohesion of the armed forces as their primary concern and may sacrifice power and other interests in order to maintain the military as an institution. Finally, patrimonial militaries that are too close to a leader might be unable to break with the regime whilst being unable to fully defend it, leading to utopian revolution instead of democratization.⁵

The Arab Spring offers an opportunity to look anew at the role of the military in democratization and revolution. The regions’ military and social structures distinguish the Arab Spring from previous waves of revolt in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa in ways that highlight the role of military structure as a separate variable. Countries in the Arab world are more likely to have many politically salient ethnic, religious, or tribal divisions than those in previous democratizing regions like Latin America or southern Europe, while their states have, generally, been more secure and institutionalized than those in much of sub-Saharan Africa. They also tend to have much stronger armies than sub-Saharan nations, and ones that are much more varied in structure than in the Soviet-installed regimes in Eastern Europe. As such, some of the variables that did not stand out so starkly in the transitions in Africa, Eastern Europe, or Latin America are easier to see in the context of the Arab Spring.

The goal of this chapter will be to use these insights from democratization and revolutions theory, combined with civil–military relations theory and the study of coup-proofing strategies in the Middle East, to build a set of features that will help categorize militaries along multiple dimensions. These features, properly construed, can predict military behavior in the face of a popular uprising, both the initial actions – repression, coup, military split, or military collapse – and the ultimate outcomes. In order to understand military structure, it is important to look at the whole repressive apparatus, but the focus is on the decisions of the uniformed military: the troops with the tanks, planes, and heavy weapons. Fred Lawson argues that internal-security forces should be studied more intently as determinants of military behavior.⁶ However, this study finds that the police, militias, and other internal-security forces are always willing to use deadly force to defend a regime. And while the power of internal-security forces can affect the cohesion and independence of the military, they are usually unable to resist the military when it chooses to act.

Civil–Military Relations and Military Professionalism

According to Peter D. Feaver, the central challenge of civil–military relations ‘is to reconcile a military strong enough to do anything the civilians ask them to with a military subordinate enough to do only what civilians authorize them to do.’⁷ The military must be able to defend the State from strong enemies, but not seek to overthrow the State or unduly influence its politics. The study of civil–military relations is essential for understanding how the military’s structure and identity affect its relationship with the State, and also how improper structures and ideas will encourage militaries to take power from civilian leaders or, in a positive move, overthrow dictators and cede power to democratic institutions. For the purposes of democratization, a fully professional military – as described below – is the best possibility. A professional military will be unlikely to intervene in the politics of a democracy, while nonetheless being willing to overthrow an unpopular, authoritarian regime in response to a popular uprising.

The concept of professionalism is the basis of Samuel Huntington’s foundational The Soldier and the State. Huntington argues that the ‘management of violence’ has all the characteristics of a profession: a high degree of expertise honed through education and research, a sense of responsibility to the society the soldier serves through the exercise of their profession, and a sense of corporate identity between officers created through common bonds formed in training and the separate social and work circles they frequent.⁸ Huntington argues the modern soldier is a professional in the same sense as a doctor or lawyer, and requires just as much time and freedom to develop the expertise to do the job well. In exchange, the soldier asks only for autonomy over their sphere, the internal organization and management of the military. As long as the government does not ask the soldier to assume a political role, they will not do so. According to Huntington, the officer is limited ‘by an awareness that his skill can only be utilized for purposes approved by society through its political agent, the state.’⁹ Huntington does not question the legitimacy of the government itself; the Kaiser’s Imperial German Government is not seen as different from American democracy on the question of legitimacy.

For S. E. Finer, Huntington’s notion of professionalism can be a danger to the regime, rather than protection. He writes, ‘The military’s consciousness of themselves as a profession may lead them to see themselves as servants of the state rather than of the government in power.’¹⁰ The military’s claim to represent the authority of the State, or the nation, over that of the government is the standard call of coup plotters and military revolutionaries. In this view, a professional officer’s duty is to the government only as far as it is the legitimate authority for the nation. The more dubious legitimacy of an unelected government – or a weak, unpopular democratic one – may encourage a professional officer to see the government as the enemy of the nation and their professional duty as overthrowing it. This view may also have legal force. Some constitutions include clauses identifying the military as a defender of the constitution against enemies both internal and external, giving military leaders an excuse to intervene in domestic politics. For Finer, ‘firm acceptance of civilian supremacy, not just professionalism, is the truly effective check.’ This ‘principle of the supremacy of the civil power’ does not give the military the problem of deciding whether the government truly represents the nation but simply subordinates it to the civil power, however that power is justified.¹¹ This is a good feature for democracies and stable autocracies because it will prevent coups. But it is problematic during peaceful...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author Bio
• Endorsement
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Men with Guns
• 2 Tunisia: A Professional Military
• 3 Egypt: An Institutionalized/Corporate Military
• 4 Bahrain: A Ruler/Mercenary Military
• 5 Libya: A Factionalized Military
• 6 Syria: A Factionalized Military
• 7 Yemen: A Factional Military
• 8 Iran: A Sultanistic Military
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography