The Arab Spring and Arab Militaries: The Role of the Military in the Transitioning Middle East

Dr. Marybeth P. Ulrich U.S. Army War College [email protected] 717-245-3272 (o) 717-512-0576 (cell)

Dr. Carol A. Atkinson Vanderbilt University [email protected]

Paper prepared for the biennial meeting of the International Political Science Association World Congress, 8-12 July 2012, Madrid, Spain

This paper is a draft. Please do not cite without author’s permission. The views reflected are the author’s own and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense, the United States Army, or the United States Army War College

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The Role of the Military in the Arab Spring Marybeth P. Ulrich and Carol Atkinson NOTE: In order not to exceed the page limit requirements for the Congress site and to maintain the quality of our posted product, we have posted our main thesis, argument, framework, and cases completed to date. By the time of time of the Madrid meeting, the remaining cases will be complete along with an additional round of revisions in the body of the paper. The updated version of the paper will be available by e-mailing the authors at the addresses noted in the cover page. Introduction This paper explores the role of the military in the Arab Spring. More specifically, this research is a comparative look at the region’s military institutions and their varied approaches to the rapid political changes taking place in their societies. We propose that the nature of the military’s role before the society began to experience rapid political change affects what role the military will play in the changing society. We posit further that the military’s placement on a professional-praetorian spectrum is a major factor determining its role in authoritarian transitions. We also think that there are other important contextual factors that explain varied patterns of civil-military relations in changing societies. These include the historical development of democratic institutions which may be reflected in the government’s level of respect for its people’s security, the government’s respect for basic freedoms, and the viability of opposition to the ruling regime. Samuel Finer referred to such conditions as being indicative of levels of political culture. Finer attributed higher levels of political culture to strong and widespread public involvement in and attachment to civil institutions (Finer, 87). Political culture, in turn, is a major indicator of a state’s level of political development which also predicts its potential for democratization. We argue that the degree of professionalism along with the level of political culture as evidenced in the state of the society’s democratic institutions results in a new

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“calculus of intervention” for military institutions in changing societies. The intervention we focus on specifically is the military’s choice to withdraw its support from an authoritarian regime in order to move the state and society away from the ruling regime. We compare data on six cases on the praetorian-professional spectrum. The Egyptian, Tunisian, and Moroccan cases fall closer to the professional end of the spectrum, while the Algerian, Syrian, and Libyan cases trended toward the praetorian end. We reject strict distinctions categorizing militaries as either praetorian or professional – and stress instead the dynamic of moving away from and toward the fully professional ranking. Indeed, we argue that militaries in service to authoritarian regimes are not capable of earning a designation beyond a “semi-professional” label until they exhibit the capacity and will to come under governmental control in a democracy. Militaries that retain substantial business interests, dominate governmental institutions, and are not subject to the control of democratic institutions are less than fully professional. We argue further that taking a more nuanced view toward praetorian militaries would also be beneficial. As recent public opinion polling in the Middle East indicates, there is widespread longing for some aspects of democracy (Pew Research Center, 2010). If one assumes that the authoritarian societies that these militaries serve will one day have to deal with democratic change, then policies aimed at moving praetorian militaries on the praetorian-professional spectrum toward professionalism may reap benefits when the transition from authoritarian rule occurs. Consequently our policy recommendations will include favoring investment in praetorian militaries, especially through such programs as IMET aimed at influencing the outlook of the future military leadership, is an important tool encouraging long term democratization in the region.

Civil-Military Relations and Transitioning Societies

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This work builds on previous research which argued that variant political systems determine variant patterns of civil-military relations. …political systems matter and are, indeed, determinants of patterns of civilmilitary relations. Authoritarian and democratic political systems produce different forms of civilian control and military professionalism. Consequently shifts in political systems necessarily result in changed patterns of civilian control and military professionalism.”(Ulrich in Democratizing Communist Militaries, p. 2) Ulrich’s work on the postcommunist transitions carved out a distinct brand of professionalism characteristic of militaries in democracies – democratic military professionalism. This brand of military professionalism applies to militaries in service to states that seek to maximize their military security without compromising democratic values in the national security effort. (Ulrich, 1999, 10)

The “Semi-Professional” Military We argue that a distinct brand of military professionalism may also be operative in states where militaries serve authoritarian regimes, but exhibit characteristics of military professionalism. We have dubbed this brand as “semi-professional”. Such militaries may serve in political systems that have not advanced beyond the authoritarian stage, but the military’s level of professionalism is strong enough to indicate that in a rapidly changing political environment, the military could be the national agent facilitating the regime’s movement away from authoritarianism. With respect to the role of the military in the Arab Spring, we accept the recent hypothesis of our colleague, David Sorenson: “The more professional the military, the more likely it is to side with protests if disorder threatens the country.” (Sorenson, forthcoming, 2012) Political Culture and Democratic Precursors

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A related precursor to democratic consolidation and the military’s subordination to democratic institutions is some level of Constitutionalism. Militaries accustomed to respecting constitutional constraints in an authoritarian system will be more predisposed to the constitutional constraints that will follow in a democratizing political system. An Egyptian officer studying under the IMET (International Military Education and Training) program in the United States described the influence of constitutional constraints on the Army’s behavior in the Egyptian revolution: According to the national constitution the Egyptian Army does not belong to the president. The Army’s role, by law, is to protect the integrity and legitimacy of the constitutional order. This helps to explain why, unlike what was the case in several other countries, the Egyptian Army reacted to the protests in the way that it did. Beginning with the spark provided by the protests of the 25th of January, the message as the Army understood it was clear: the Army would not use violence against the people. This was issued to us as a clear order, and it also came from within the conscience of every member of the Armed Forces—not a single shot would be fired against the protesters.1

Another measure of military dominance is the historical balance between the military and other societal institutions in terms of budget expenditures. Militaries that fall closer to the praetorian end of the praetorian-professional spectrum are “rent-seekers” accustomed to gaining budget share not commensurate with threat levels or strategic needs. We are particularly interested in predicting the propensity of a state’s armed forces to either prevent or facilitate a nation’s transition from an authoritarian regime. We argue that the higher the level of the military institution’s professionalism, the less likely that the military will support an authoritarian regime’s order to apply force against the civilian population. Higher levels of professionalism are manifested in such areas as greater military competency and an ability to think in terms of a national interest, versus an institutional or individual interest. A reluctance to be used as the regime’s tool in

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Egyptian military officer studying in the United States’ unpublished paper, 1 June 2012.

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internal policing actions is another indicator of high levels of professionalism. (Sorenson, et. al.) In sum, our study of professionalism within the Arab Spring context posits that authoritarian militaries have varied levels of professionalism which make it more or less likely that when the opportunity for a transition away from authoritarian rule occurs, the military will be an agent of change motivated to step away from the authoritarian regime. The intent is to apply the proposed framework to various cases in the region in order to predict outcomes and to inform the policies of external actors engaged in promoting transitions from authoritarian rule. The paper will conclude with policy recommendations aimed at supporting the aims of domestic and international actors alike with the common interest of promoting democracy. One likely recommendation is to encourage the development of professional militaries – even within authoritarian regimes. Such actions over time will set the conditions for the post-authoritarian military to be an agent of change when the opportunity for revolutionary or more evolutionary transition occurs. The Cases [Note: The Egyptian, Moroccan, and Syrian cases will be included in the final paper] The purpose of the following section of the paper is to provide an overview of six countries in North Africa and the Arab Middle East that had very different experiences during the Arab Spring: Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Egypt, and Syria. For each country we discuss historical, political, military, and economic factors that informed the government’s reaction to the spreading democratic protests in early 2011. What has happened since January disproves longstanding assumptions about how democracies can - and should - emerge in the Arab World. Even neoconservatives, who seemed passionately attached to the notion of democratic revolution, told us this would be a generational struggle. Arabs were asked to be patient, and to wait. In order to move toward democracy, they would first have to build a secular middle class, reach a certain level of economic growth, and somehow, foster a democratic culture. It was never quite explained how a democratic culture could emerge under dictatorship. (Hamid, 2011)

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Tunisia Tunisia is a modern country. Ethnically it is 98% Arab; in terms of religion it is 98% Muslim. In comparison to the countries that we will discuss next, Tunisia is more developed and its citizens better off economically. In comparison to the rest of the world, it ranks quite a bit lower. Tunisia’s literacy rate hovers around 75% and its unemployment rate in 2010 was around 14% (U.S. CIA 2012). Figure #1 shows four demographic characteristics often associated with a country’s ability to develop democratic governance and to sustain democratic transitions. The four graphs for Tunisia provide historical data on factors known to underlie a country’s prospects for achieving and maintain democratic governance. The graphs are also a useful way to compare Tunisia and each of the five countries that follow. In the appendix to this paper, are two sets of four graphs for Norway and South Korea in order to provide for the reader a comparison to how our six Middle East countries compare to countries outside the region. In the upper left hand corner of Figure #1 is level is the democratic governance in Tunisia leading up to the Arab Spring. Scholars have argued that democracy is more likely to survive in countries that have past experience with democratic governance. In this graph the level of democracy is determined using data from the Polity VI Project that rates the extent to which the country has democratic institutions (Marshall et al. 2012). In this graph the scale goes from 0 representing a fully institutionalized autocracy to 20 representing fully institutionalized democracy. As can be seen, democratic conditions improved slightly after 1987 when Ben Ali seized power from Bourguiba, but democratic institutions are clearly lacking and at no time does Tunisia become anything other than primarily autocratic.

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The graph in the upper right hand corner of Figure #1 uses the CingranelliRichards physical integrity index that rates a country’s respect for the human rights of its citizens (Cingranelli and Richards 2012a, Cingranelli and Richards 2012b). The physical integrity index rates a government on its propensity to use torture, extrajudicial killing, and political imprisonment against its citizens. A rating of 0 indicates no government respect whereas a rating of 8 indicates full government respect for the human rights of its citizens (Cingranelli and Richards 2012b). As can be seen, Tunisian citizens have never achieved full respect and are often the subject of human rights abuses by the government. Moving on to the two graphs in the lower half of Figure #1. The first shows gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, a measure that is often used to assess the level of economic development in a country. In study after study democratization scholars have found that democracy is more likely to survive in countries that have achieved a certain level of economic development. Przeworski et al. (2000) have found that when countries achieve a level of economic well-being such that GDP per capita reaches or exceeds $4,000 [NOTE--check this fact; find pg #], then democracy is much more likely to succeed. As can be seen, in Tunisia, the level of economic well-being is exceedingly low when measured by world standards, but leading up to the Arab Spring it had been increasing slightly with Tunisia achieving a GDP per capita of $3,438 in 2010 (USDA ERS 2012). The final graph in the bottom right hand corner shows the percentage of GDP that Tunisia has spent on its military. This percentage has been declining over the years and in 2010 stood at 1.4%. This low percentage is not surprising based on the history of Tunisia’s rulers who sought to keep the military from becoming a threat to the government (discussed below). With these basic factors and how they played out in

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previous democratization studies in mind, we now proceed to a discussion of the relationship of Tunisia’s military with its civilian rulers leading up to the Arab Spring. Tunisia, much like its neighbors throughout North Africa and Mesopotamia, traces its history back many millennium. The Carthaginian Republic, centered in what is now modern day Tunis, controlled much of the Mediterranean and was one of the largest and longest-lived states in the ancient world until it was defeated and destroyed by the Roman Empire in 146 BC. In the modern era, Tunisia is a small state of around 10.5 million people sandwiched between its two much larger neighbors Algeria and Libya. Beginning in the late 1800’s French influence over Tunisia grew in response to French attempts to counter Algerian rebel attacks on French colonial rule in Algeria that were being launched from Tunisia (Sorenson 2008: 369). In 1881 the French invaded Tunisia and established a French protectorate. Resistance to French colonial grew in the aftermath of World War I finally culminating in independence in 1956 under the rule of resistance fighter Habib Bourguiba. The change from French rule to independence was comparatively smooth. Middle East expert David Sorenson called the transition “elegant” noting: “Where violence wracked Algeria, Kenya, and much of Portuguese Africa, Tunisia transitioned to a modern country without turmoil, and in many ways that was due to Bourguiba’s leadership.” (Sorenson 2008: 370-371) The country’s first president, Habib Bourguiba, had been a key leader in the resistance movement. Unlike most other independence movements in the region, the Tunisian movement was driven by its civilian leadership under Bourguiba who was seen as the hero of the revolutionary movement. This is important because the Tunisian military was not the institution responsible for throwing off colonial rule, and it was not the institution that took control of the country after independence. Thus, even in these earlier years the Tunisian military was remote from coups and other anti-regime activities.

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During his reign Bourguiba preferred to keep it that way. He kept the size of the military small and away from his center of power relying on police and other internal security militias to enforce his rule. The Tunisian military has remained fairly small with 38,500 soldiers (27,000 in the army, 4,800 in the navy, 4,000 air forces, and 12,000 in the national guard) on active duty on the eve of the Arab Spring (IISS 2010: 274). The military has universal conscription with all 20 year old men expected to serve “to protect the country, to safeguard its independence, its sovereignty, and the integrity of the national territory.” (Tunisian Ministry of Defense 2012). As Lutterbeck (2012: 8) noted, this is an important factor because most of the conscripts came from economically depressed areas of the country and were likely to sympathsize with the grievances of the protestors. Because Bourguiba marginalized the military, the Tunisian military remained depoliticized and grew increasingly professional in the years leading up to the Arab Spring. During this time, the Tunisian military also developed connections to European and U.S. militaries; for example, through attending training schools in Europe and the United States. The overthrow of Bourguiba in 1987 is an excellent example of the military’s relative lack of political ambitions. In the coup, it was Bourguiba’s own interior minister, Zine el Abidine ben Ali, who overthrew him, rather than any active duty military officer. In assessing the apolitical nature of the Tunisian military, Lutterbeck (2012: 7) wrote: “There is arguably no Arab country in which the identity of the armed forces has been more clearly distinct from the regime in power” than in Tunisia. Likewise former U.S. Defense Attaché to Tunisia, Warren Gunderman, remarked upon the professionalism that he found amongst Tunisian soldiers in 2007-2010. As an exception to the norm in Middle Eastern militaries, Gunderman was “struck by the fact that every Tunisian officer I knew was focused on maintenance and training - not on personal aggrandizement or monetary gain.” (Gunderman 2011: 2) Experts on civil-military

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relations in the Middle East have characterized the Tunisian military in different ways, but reflecting the same nature as Sorenson (2012) who characterized it as “professional” (rather than “praetorian”) where as Lutterbeck (2012:7-9) characterized it as a military that had “openness to pro-reform movements.” To summarize, the Tunisian military is smaller, less involved in politics, and widely seen as more professional than other regional militaries. In the years preceding the Arab Spring, Tunisian citizens regarded their military as a professional organization, apolitical, and not corrupted (unlike other government institutions) by the Ben Ali regime and his family. The military’s professionalism was certainly seen in the military’s response to the Arab Spring protests where the military became the protector of the people rather than an instrument of the Ben Ali dictatorship. Reporting from Tunis in January 2011, New York Times correspondent David Kirkpatrick (2011) described the Tunisian military as professional and restrained in its actions as the protests unfolded. Army Chief of Staff General Rashid Ammar, Tunisia’s top military officer during the protests, refused orders by the Ben Ali government to fire on the demonstrators, ordered his soldiers not to fire on protestors, and used his soldiers to protect demonstrators against Ben Ali’s security and police forces. The Tunisian military’s actions during the Arab Spring are likely to have longer-term consequences for the nature of governance in Tunisia. As Cook (2011) argued: “The military’s decision to side with the people will likely put pressure on Tunisia’s interim leaders and those who want eventually to come to power to heed society’s demands for reform and change.”

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Figure 1

Tunisia

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Military Expenditures as % GDP

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Data Sources: Polity IV Project, CIRI Human Rights Data Project, USDA/ERS, US Census Bureau/IDB, SIPRI. See text for full citat ions.

Libya Libya is an interesting comparison case to Tunisia. Although Libya’s Arab Spring protests were also successful and its people fought bravely, Libyan success can be attributed more to outside military intervention than anything its own military did or did not do. Our indicators suggest that its democratic future is likely to be much more difficult to consolidate primarily because it lacks any functioning national institutional framework. Geographically, Libya is ten times the size of Tunisia, but with fewer people (6.4 million in 2010) most of whom live along the coastal areas. Much like Tunisia, Libya is predominantly Arab and Arab-Berber (97%) and Muslim (97%). Libya’s literacy rate is

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2010

higher, with about 83% of the population literate, yet Libya’s unemployment rate is double that of Tunisia with unemployment estimated at 30% in 2004 (U.S. CIA 2012). Figure 2 shows our four comparison graphs. As can be seen in the upper left graph, since 1975 Libya’s level of democracy has remained constantly on the autocratic end of the polity spectrum (constant score of 3 out of 20). Leading up to the Arab Spring protests Libya had little experience with democratic institutions and, unlike Tunisia, showed no signs of developing them. In fact in 2010 after over 40 years of rule, Qaddafi had built few effective government institutions of any sort but relied on personal patronage, an overlapping array of citizen committees, tribal ties, and placing family members in key authority positions (such as the head of elite security units) to maintain his rule and run the country. In what one analyst has called “ one of the world’s most bizarre governments” (Bynam 2011), Qaddafi himself held no official position in the country although he was clearly its leader. In the upper right hand corner graph, we can see that Libya’s experience as an autocratic country is accompanied by a propensity of its government to murder, torture, and politically imprison regime opponents and citizens. In a system with few effective institutions, Qaddafi used fear, coercion, and ruthlessness to impose his rule such as in the case of the 1996 massacre of 1,200 prisoners (mostly political) at the Abu Salim prison near Tripoli (for an eyewitness account see (Hill 2011)). The trend line does indicate that since 1975 this abusive situation has improved slightly for Libyan citizens as Qaddafi sought to rebuild and normalize his relationship with the West. Moving on to the lower portion of Figure 2, we can see in the lower left hand corner, the GDP per capita was higher than in Tunisia and on the rise. From this it might be concluded that Libyan citizens, despite their high unemployment rate, were economically better off than their Tunisian neighbors with more than double their GDP per capita at $8,705 in 2010 (USDA ERS 2012). While GDP per capita is a good

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indicator of well-being in some cases, the GDP per capita figures for Libya are deceptive. This is because, much like many of the Arabian Gulf countries, Libya derives most of its income from oil revenues that account for 95% of export earnings, 25% of GDP, and 80% of government revenues (U.S. CIA 2012). Much of this money is used to support the regime and little trickles down to the common person, many of whom live in poverty. In the final graph in the bottom right hand corner we can also see that very little of the regime’s money trickles down to the military where the percentage of GDP that Libya spent on its military had been steadily declining over the years to 1.2% in 2008 (SIPRI 2012). This low percentage is not surprising based on Qaddafi’s desire to keep the military from becoming a threat to his regime (discussed below), the cessation of the war with Chad in 1994, and the more recent rapprochement with the west. With this background information in mind, we now proceed to a discussion of the relationship of the military to Qaddafi and its role in the Arab Spring protests. In its early history the land area that now encompasses Libya was colonized first by the Greeks in the 7th Century BC and was bequeathed to the Rome roughly 600 years later. With the decline of the Roman Empire, the region experienced rule by successive Arab Islamic dynasties until the mid 1500’s when it came under the control of the Ottoman Empire where it remained until 1911 when it was occupied and colonized by Italy. Rule by Italy was exceedingly harsh and exploitative. In the aftermath of Italy’s defeat in the Second World War, Italy relinquished all control of Libya and the country was put under British trusteeship before gaining independence in 1951 as a monarchy under King Muhammed Idris as-Sanusi. Oil was discovered in Libya in 1959 and an extremely poor country was suddenly very wealthy, but oil revenues also resulted in grievances against the U.S. and British oil companies that controlled this wealth and against the king for his pro-Western policies (Sorenson 2008: 384). In 1969 Muammar

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Qaddafi, a young military officer, seized power. He remained Libya’s dictator for the next 42 years. Qaddafi’s rule was harsh, personalistic, and erratic. Assassinations, executions, and torture of real or imagined political dissenters were used to consolidate and maintain his rule. Qaddafi did not build institutions to govern the country but formed and re-formed overlapping layers of citizen committees that built loyalty to his regime through patronage. These committees were relatively easy to disband if they became troublesome (as some of them later did). In terms of governance, Lutterbeck (2012: 12) characterized Libya as a country “largely devoid of functioning state institutions” to include an effective military organization. This is an important point to keep in mind because in the aftermath of the Arab Spring there was little basis upon which to build a successor government; literally the entire governing structure will have to be developed, certainly a very daunting task. Experts on civil-military relations in the Middle East have characterized the Libyan military as praetorian (Sorenson 2012) and fractured (Lutterbeck 2012: 12). As in the Tunisian case, Qaddafi sought to keep the military weak and away from his centers of power. In 2010, the Libyan military had 76,000 soldiers (50,000 in the army, 8,000 in the navy, and 18,000 in the air force) many of whom were serving as conscripts (IISS 2010: 262). The military was poorly trained, not well motivated, and lacked sufficient weaponry as evidence by their rout in war against Chad in 1986. As in the case of governance structures, Qaddafi sought to divide (or fracture) military power amongst many groups by creating and supporting an array of militias.

Kamrava (2000: 68)

described the Libyan military as one in which “political aspirations are kept in check and are neutralized by a highly ideological, largely volunteer militia.” Qaddafi allocated the responsibilities for his personal security and for regime (i.e. national) security to both mercenaries and elite security units often under the control of Qaddafi family members. For example, Lutterbeck (2012: 13) describes the key role that

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one of these units, the 32nd Khamis Brigade, played in protecting the regime and putting down protests during the Arab Spring. The brigade named for Qaddafi’s youngest son, Khamis, who was also its commander, was known for its ruthlessness. This is important because it was these personalistic security mechanisms that remained loyal to the Qaddafi regime during the Arab Spring protests. As Seif Al Islam, Qaddafi’s oldest son, said on television as battles raged against the Libyan rebels: “We will fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet.” (as quoted in (Al Arabiya News 2011)) The military, as Qaddafi might have suspected, had no vested interest in helping the regime stay in power and potions of it began to defect to the rebels when the Arab Spring protests began in Libya; partly because many of the soldiers were conscripts and many had no vested interests in the regime that would justify losing their lives or killing fellow citizens. This is an important factor and as Lutterbeck (2012: 14) has argued was one important consequence of Qaddafi’s concept of civil-military relations. But, it should also be kept in mind that these were not his elite fighting forces, many of which did fight to the very end to protect the regime. And, it is equally important to note that defection of conscripts to the rebel forces was not the key factor in defeat of the regime. Perhaps more important were western airstrikes on the forces remaining loyal to Qaddafi. The forces loyal to Qaddafi “may well have succeeded in quelling the revolt and in recapturing even the city of Benghazi” had it not been for the airstrikes (Lutterbeck 2012: 14). To summarize, on the eve of the Arab Spring protests in Libya, the regular Libyan military was relatively small, underfunded, and generally seen by Libyans (and Westerners) as a mediocre force, except for the elite units directly controlled by the Qaddafi family. It played a minimal role in protecting the regime because it had no vested interest in doing so and it had not been organized to do so. The military was sidelined by the better equipped militias and mercenary forces that had clear-cut

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reasons to be loyal to Qaddafi and vested interests in making sure his regime survived. In terms of civil-military relations, Qaddafi neutered his military by fracturing its capabilities amongst competing armed groups. Unlike in the Tunisian case where Ben Ali’s police forces were overwhelmed by the volume and intensity of protests and the military refused to step in to help the regime; in the Libyan case the militias and military units designed to defend the regime fought to the very end. In many ways fracturing the military’s power was an effective civil-military strategy on the part of Qaddafi because it is likely that without western military intervention he would have been able to recapture rebel towns and reinstitute control over them.

Figure 2

Libya

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Data Sources: Polity IV Project, CIRI Human Rights Data Project, USDA/ERS, US Census Bureau/IDB, SIPRI. See text for full citat ions.

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2010

Algeria Algeria is an interesting case for comparison with all of the other five countries because in Algeria protests were relatively peaceful, the government responded quickly to address citizen demands, and there was no overthrow of the government. In great measure this may be attributed to everyone’s weariness with war and violence. Algeria’s extremely violent civil war from 1991-2002 had resulted in over 200,000 deaths many of great brutality as well as in the collapse of the constitutional government. Few wished to return to such an era. It may also be, as suggested by a recent report (Al Jazeera 2012), that people were not only “traumatized by the country’s violent past,” but also “living in fear of its secret police.” Algeria is the largest country in Africa in terms of land area (approximately 3.5 times the size of Texas (U.S. CIA 2012)). Much like Tunisia and Libya, it is ethnically Arab and Arab-Berber (99%) and most people (99%) are Muslim. Its literacy rate is comparatively low at 69.9% and its unemployment rate is high, estimated at 30% in 2011 (Boundaoui 2011). Figure 3 shows our four comparison graphs for Algeria. As can be seen in the upper two graphs, on the eve of the Arab Spring protests Algeria had made great strides in building democratic institutions, with an overall polity rating of 12 out of 20 from 2004 through 2010. Human rights abuses were at the worst levels during the years of the civil war, but since 2006 the government had done a better job at respecting citizens’ rights. In the lower half of Figure 3, it can be seen that economic well-being of people had not improved much over the years. Nevertheless, GDP per capita had reached $3,347 in 2010 (USDA ERS 2012). In the same year the government spent around 3.6% of GDP on the military. While certainly not excessive, it is a number that had not declined much from military expenditures during the civil war era as one might have expected. This is certainly one indication of the military’s continuing privileged

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place and civilian leaders’ fear that a reduction in military resources might once again (as it had happened in 1992) trigger a military coup. The fear of a military coup and its consequences is the quintessential nature of civil-military relations throughout the modern history of Algeria. It is a country that experienced a brutal colonial period that began in the early 1830’s when France invaded and annexed Algeria. French rule exacerbated societal cleavages that already existed and in particular the Muslim population was treated harshly. As Sorenson (2008: 413) illustrated, Algeria’s Muslims “made up almost 90 percent of the population and produced around 20 percent of Algeria’s wealth but paid close to 70 percent of direct taxes. … [in 1915] One Muslim child in ten went to school, while nearly all of the colon children did.” Resistance to French rule escalated in the 1950’s. The FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) launched a guerilla campaign, or war for independence in 1954. Violence on both sides quickly escalated with civilians and fighters as targets. Sorenson (2008: 414) relates: “the death toll soared. Torture and ritualistic murder became commonplace.” France recognized Algeria as an independent country in1962 and its first leader, Ahmed Ben Bella, was the leader of the guerillas (FLN). Soon after independence, in 1965, Ben Bella was overthrown by the army and his own defense minister, Houari Bourmédienne. Bourmédienne increased autocratic rule ordering agricultural collectivization and arabization. The military increased its role as an integral power broker in Algerian politics. However, the military’s power was soon challenged by the growing influence of Islamists, and in particular the FIS (Front Islamique du Salat), the leading Islamist party. The FIS won 48% of the popular vote and 188 of 231 seats in the first round of elections in Algeria’s first democratic elections in 1991. Because a government dominated by the FIS was unacceptable to the military, the military cancelled the second round of elections, chose their own head of state, and imprisoned FIS leaders. These actions on the part of the military triggered the brutal

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Algerian Civil War between the military and the Islamists that would last for more than 10 years. In what Ryan (2010) calls a “dirty war,” 200,000 Algerians were killed, tens of thousands disappeared, and survivors remain traumatized by the experience. The nature of civil-military relations in Algeria were an important root cause of the civil war. Kamrava (2000: 79) argued the military’s reaction to the 1991 elections was caused by the hasty “civilianzation” of Algeria’s political system that resulted in inevitable backlash from the military that saw its power about to be diminished: Civilianization’s perceived threats to senior officers were further compounded in Algeria by the state’s hurried attempts at democratization without first realigning the various institutes of the state, most of which continued to remain under the control of the armed forces. A military coup was almost bound to happen: having played an entrenched role in the political process, faced with sudden political marginalization and the very possibility of a stunning electoral victory by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), the impulse to preserve the status quo and to maintain the traditional post-1962 polity seemed almost natural for the military. For the leaders of the 1992 coup, the extensive violence and bloodshed that ensued were only the unpleasant side effects of a necessary ‘corrective measure.’ (Kamrava 2000: 79)

Today, the Algerian military remains a powerful and politicized force in Algeria. In 2010, the military consisted of 147,000 soldiers (127,000 in the army, 6,000 in the navy, and 14,000 in the air force), and an additional 187,200 paramilitary that served in various internal security, police, and militias (IISS 2010: 245-246). As an example of its continuing influence, Sorenson (2010: 138) described how in the aftermath of the election Abdelazziz Bouteflika in1999, Bouteflika needed “five years to bring the Algerian General Staff under control, which occurred only after the 2004 general election forcing the retirement of General Staff head General Mohamed Lamari.” The Algerian protests that occurred in December 2010 through February 2011 were not focused on regime change as in Tunisia and Egypt, but were mainly over economic grievances: high food prices and lack of employment opportunities especially for young people. In February 2011, Al Jazeera reported: “While Algeria today is as

20

thirsty for real democracy as its counterparts throughout North Africa and the Middle East, what Algerians want is not a sudden overthrow of the regime. Algerians – in their own words – are tired of unrest. What Algerians want is reform, transparency and accountable representation in government.” The nature of the Arab Spring protests in Algeria depended on both the behavior of the protestors and the government. In seeking to explain why protests were relatively mild in Algeria, Algerian blogger-activist Elias Filali wrote: “Remember Algeria’s been through a terrible civil war that saw 200,000 people slaughtered. I think people are tired of violence. Images of blood on the street, images of beheaded people on the street – it’s not easy to forget. And people they’re tired –it doesn’t mean they don’t want to see real change, but they haven’t got the appetite for any more protests.” (as quoted in Boundaoui 2011) The Bouteflika government, for its own part, made concessions early: on 8 January 2011 the government reduced food and oil prices; on 22 February it repealed the state of emergency laws that had been in effect since 1991. The emergency laws had prohibited peaceful protests and curtailed political freedoms and had been a key demand of the protestors (Al Jazeera 2011). With the granting of these demands, protests declined. To summarize, on the eve of the Arab Spring protests in Algeria, the Algerian military was powerful and an important political player that had extensive ties to the government. Unlike in other countries protests in Algeria were mainly over economic grievances with few people calling for regime change. The government acted quickly to ameliorate people’s demands making concessions on food and oil prices as well as lifting the state of emergency laws. With their demands addressed and ever mindful of the bloody civil war, there was little desire on the part of people to continue and there was little need on the part of the government to use the military against its citizens.

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Figure 3

Algeria

percent of GDP 20 10

20 05

20 00

19 95

19 90

19 85

19 80

19 75

20 10

20 05

Military Expenditures as % GDP

US dollars 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

GDP per capita

20 00

20 10

20 05

20 00

19 95

19 90

19 85

19 80

19 75

0

19 95

5

19 90

10

19 85

Polity Scale

15

Respect for Human Rights 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

19 80

CIRI physical integrity index

Level of Democracy 20

16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1990

1995

2000

2005

Data Sources: Polity IV Project, CIRI Human Rights Data Project, USDA/ERS, US Census Bureau/IDB, SIPRI. See text for full citat ions.

Preliminary Recommendations Our cases illustrate that the tendency to support movement away from an authoritarian regime, resulting in its downfall depends on a number of factors. The level of professionalism is one key factor indicating whether or not the military’s disposition is to side with the people or follow regime orders to put down the revolution. Furthermore, the level of democracy was an indicator of the degree that democratic precursors were in place to reduce the legitimacy of the authoritarian regime and support a transition away from it. GDP per capita served as a precursor indicating the potential for the development of a middle class to form, and along with it, more demands for democratic accountability. Finally, military expenditures as a percent of GDP indicated the degree

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to which the military institution dominated other institutions and was a measure of its power overall. Our recommendations follow directly from these measures of the “new calculus of intervention”. We recommend policy initiatives that bolster each aspect of the calculus: professionalism, democratic institutions, and economic development. Programs that influence future military leadership to support greater institutionalization including processes that encourage greater military competence and focus on national interests versus individual or institutional interests will contribute to greater military professionalism. A particularly valuable tool in this respect is the IMET program. As stated at the onset of the paper, IMET stands out as an opportunity to move both praetorian and “semi-professional” militaries toward the professional end of the praetorian-professional spectrum. Policies advancing the progress of democratic institutions will be especially important for advancing “semi-professional” militaries on the spectrum toward more fully professional militaries. Such policies will also advance the transitioning societies overall toward the goal of democratic consolidation. Policies advancing economic development will also buttress the odds of meeting the demands of democratizing societies, moving them steadily toward democratization. Much work remains for scholars seeking to learn the lessons from the ongoing cases represented in the Arab Spring. We have just begun to apply the lessons from previous waves of democratic transitions, such as those in postcommunist Eastern Europe, and the earlier ongoing transitions in postauthoritarian Latin America. However, we believe that recasting previous held binary views of professionalism and praetorianism into a more dynamic concept focused on influencing military institutions’ progress along the spectrum will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the

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roles of military institutions in transitioning states and to greater potential for both domestic and external actors to positively influence them.

References Cingranelli, David L. and David L. Richards. 2012a. The Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Dataset, version 2011.12.09. Available on-line at: http://www.humanrightsdata.org. . Cingranelli, David L., and David L. Richards. 2012b. The Cingranelli–Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Data Project Coding Manual, version 2011.12.09. Available on-line at: http://ciri.binghamton.edu/documentation/ciri_coding_guide.pdf. . Cook, Steven A. 2011. “Tunisia after Ben Ali.” First Take. Council on Foreign Relations. Available on-line at: www.cfr.org/democracy-and-humanrights/tunisia-after-ben-ali/p23804. . Gunderman, Warren. 2011. “Is Tunisia Tipping?” Of Interest. Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute. Hamid, Shadi. 2011. “The Struggle for Middle East Democracy.” Cairo Review of Global Affairs. International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). 2010. The Military Balance 2010, volume 110:1. Jane’s, “Jane's World Armies: Egypt,” March 10, 2011, http://www4.janes.com/subscribe/jwar/doc_view.jsp (accessed May 18, 2011). Karawan, Ibrahim A. “Egypt,” in The Political Role of the Military: An International Handbook (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1996), Ed. Constantine P. Danopoulos, http://psi.praeger.com (accessed May 18, 2011). Kamrava, Mehran. 2000. “Military Professionalization and Civil-Military Relations in the Middle East.” Political Science Quarterly 115:1, pages 67-92. Kirkpatrick, David D. 2011. “Military Backs New Leaders in Tunisia.” New York Times. 16 January 2011.

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Lutterbeck, Derek. 2012. “Arab Uprisings, Armed Forces, and Civil-Military Relations.” Armed Forces and Society 00:0 (on-line 13 April 2012), 1-25 Marshall, Monty G., Keith Jaggers and Ted Robert Gurr. 2012. Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics, 1800-2010. Center for Systemic Peace. On-line at: http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm; < accessed on 6 June 2012.> Pew Research Center, Pew Global Attitudes Project, December 2010; http://www.pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamasand-hezbollah/ ; accessed 15 Jun 2012 Przeworski, Adam, Michael E. Alvarez, José Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi. 2000. Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and WellBeing in the World, 1950-1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Sorenson, David S. 2012. “The Arab Spring: Explaining Depth and Breadth.” Presentation at the Arab Spring Symposium, U.S. Army War College, January 2012. Sorenson, David S. 2010. “Civil Military Relations.” In David S. Sorenson (Editor). Interpreting Middle East Themes. Boulder: Westview Press, pages 125-155. Sorenson, David S. 2008. An Introduction to the Modern Middle East. Boulder: Westview Press. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). 2012. SIPRI Military Expenditure Database. Available on-line at: www.sipri.org. . Tunisian Ministry of Defense. 2012. On-line in English at www.defense.tn.en. . United Nations (UN AHDR). 2009. Arab Human Development Report 2009: Challenges to Human Security in the Arab Countries. New York: United Nations Development Programme, Regional Bureau for Arab States. U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). 2012. U.S. Overseas Loans and Grants, Foreign Assistance Fast Facts: FY2010. From data entitled “Total Economic Assistance, obligations in millions, historical $US.” On-line at: http://gbk.eads.usaidallnet.gov/. U.S. Bureau of the Census. 2009. International Data Base, version 12-15-2008. Available on-line at: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/. . 25

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). 2012. The World Fact Book. Online: www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. 2012. International Macroeconomic Data Set, table entitled: “Real Historical Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Growth Rates of GDP for Baseline Countries/Regions (in billions of 2005 dollars) 1969-2011.” Data was update January 26, 2012 and is available at www.ers.usda.gov/data/ .

Appendix

Norway

20 05

19 95

19 85

19 75

20 10

20 05

20 00

19 95

Military Expenditures as % GDP

US dollars 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

GDP per capita

19 90

16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

20 10

20 05

20 00

19 95

19 90

19 85

19 80

19 75

0

19 85

5

CIRI physical integrity index

10

19 80

Polity Scale

15

Respect for Human Rights 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

percent of GDP

Level of Democracy 20

1990

1995

2000

2005

Data Sources: Polity IV Project, CIRI Human Rights Data Project, USDA/ERS, US Census Bureau/IDB, SIPRI. See text for full citat ions.

26

2010

Republic of Korea

20 05

19 95

19 85

19 75

20 10

20 05

20 00

19 95

Military Expenditures as % GDP

US dollars 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 ,0 0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

GDP per capita

19 90

16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

20 10

20 05

20 00

19 95

19 90

19 85

19 80

19 75

0

19 85

5

CIRI physical integrity index

10

19 80

Polity Scale

15

Respect for Human Rights 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

percent of GDP

Level of Democracy 20

1990

1995

2000

2005

Data Sources: Polity IV Project, CIRI Human Rights Data Project, USDA/ERS, US Census Bureau/IDB, SIPRI. See text for full citat ions.

27

2010