Prospects for “Democratic Control of the Armed Forces”?

Introduction

In 2012, the Arab world is undeniably undergoing a fundamental process of change. Regime-shaking social movements have risen up against authoritarian rule and have attempted to overthrow their entrenched rulers. The final outcomes of this process are far from concluded, and it is still too early to tell what new trends will take the Arab world at large. Nevertheless, there is a clearly discernable breach in authoritarian rule.

This article does not focus on the maintenance of authoritarian rule (through a mixture of reforms, preemptive concessions, and repression: Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco), nor outright repression (Bahrain) or civil war (Syria). Rather, this article focuses on Arab countries at a specific stage of political development (Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen), in a process of transition from authoritarian rule. These will not be ipso facto transitions to democracy, even if regime breakdowns opened the way to strong societal pressures for democratization. These transition processes that have reached a “critical mass” (the fall of the autocrat and free elections are essential signposts, but lots of uncertainties remain) are distinguished from cases where repression and even militarization is “the only game in town.” At the time of this writing, countries that shifted from this latter stage to the former are exemplified by Libya and Yemen, while Tunisia and Egypt act as trendsetters after quick initial transitions. Overall, the process is characterized by a strong transnational imitation effect across the Arab world.

The militaries have played an essential role in these transitions even though they are a part of the authoritarian regimes. As a result, the stirrings of transition have shifted the focus from the previous concern about “armies in authoritarian settings” (an essential feature of enduring authoritarianism) to a discussion about “armies and civilians in Arab transitions” (from authoritarianism). ¹ An essential factor in the successful transition from authoritarian to democratic rule is the establishment of democratic civil–military relations. In the context of unprecedented changes (still in the making) in the Arab world, a related comparative literature dealing with earlier cases in Latin America (1980s), Southern Europe (1970s–early 1980s), and Eastern Europe (1989) can be invoked, offering a map for the Arab world which may travel in the direction of democracy. Such a map may help us better understand what the road toward the so-called democratic control of the armed forces or security sector reform (SSR) might entail. ²

Three factors are essential to understanding civil–military relations in the Arab world in the years to come. First, this article argues that the military came to play a decisive role in the course of the 2011 uprisings, namely at a very specific moment, that of massive societal mobilizations against authoritarian rule in the Arab world. These militaries, though not situated at the core of decision-making sites, have been part of authoritarian regimes for decades. That does not mean that armies were completely insulated and unaware of the amount of change that preceded the collapse of authoritarian regimes. In some cases, they were able to ease transition processes; in other cases, they were engulfed in transitions. All in all, the military has been engaged, albeit reluctantly, in politics, in a manner not anticipated before. Second, Arab polities are situated at a very specific moment, that of transition, where divergent trends are colliding in a context of uncertainty. In such settings, amid reawakened political struggles, the military, feeling the inevitability of change, tends to negotiate its autonomy in a parallel process of civilian and military empowerments. Third, at this precise moment, essential issues of institutionalization quite different from the initial conditions that helped advance the early steps of transition are at stake, as attempts are made to remove the military’s ability to play a direct role determining the course of events. Comparative lessons teach us that civilian control is not just a radical reigning in of the military but a set of understandings that keep the military safe after it has given up power.

Preliminary Note: The Normative Case for “Democratic Control of the Armed Forces”

There is a vexing political contradiction, which is an age-old dilemma, from Plato to modern democratic theorists (from Dahl in the 1950s to the proponents of “transitology” in the 1980–90s). ³ Politics involves the management of coercive power that takes the form of a military organization. But who will “guard the guardians”? The very coercive institution established to protect the polity is given sufficient power to become a threat to that polity; the military must be strong enough, but at the same time the holder of coercive power will have the capability to enforce its will on the community that created it. Achieving civilian control is a tall order for any regime, and it has been considered an essential problem in democracies, either nascent or established. ⁴

Modern democratic theorists hold that civilians should rule. This normative assumption holds that civilians may not possess all the relevant technical competencies to make decisions in the management of violence (as compared with the military), but that they should be in charge and trump the military view (with both executive authority and legislative supervision over the military). ⁵

“Transitologists” (those who study transitions from authoritarian rule) have reintroduced this problematic in a period of great uncertainty and opportunity: when regime hard-liners and soft-liners and moderate and radical civilian politicians strategically negotiate with the objective of working out arrangements for the transfer of power to democrats. ⁶ The military is a strategic constituency in such a bargaining process. Transitologists analyze how reformers might empower themselves to lead the military to tolerate the establishment of a political regime it might initially not favor and they assess how the military could condone the dismantlement of authoritarian institutions. Civilian control of the military is said to be particularly central to new democracies just emerging from authoritarian situations in which the military occupied prominent positions: it is a support mechanism for democracy construction and an indication of the success and extent of post-authoritarian democratization.

Comparative studies of Latin America (1980s), Southern Europe (Spain and Portugal in the 1980s), or Eastern Europe (after the fall of Communism) teach us how important the issues of civilian–military relations are during transitional periods. ⁷ They provide insights and lessons on what “civil–military relations” are and where dimensions of “agency” are located: civil–military relations are a complex process of negotiations, bluffs, threats, and exchange offers between actors jockeying for power.

The Military’s Weight and the “Stress Test” of Massive Societal Mobilizations

The military, though not the main arm of authoritarian regimes (as compared with the Interior ministry), has been one crucial pillar, as the ultimate coercive backbone that incumbent regimes would employ and as an important (shadowy) stakeholder in the authoritarian “status quo” (especially when it was a large military). But the military faced a particularly stressful setting in the Arab world in 2011, with the call for harsh repression by incumbent regimes at a time of massive and spontaneous societal mobilizations against authoritarian rule. The immediate fate of Arab uprisings was to a great extent linked to the role of armies and their immediate responses: the tipping point of transitions was located in the military.

The main engine of “revolutionary” upheavals in 2011 was the renewed capacity of society to resist domination and act collectively. Supposedly stable authoritarian regimes with large police forces (police state or mukhabarat states) and international connections (regimes presented themselves as bulwarks against Islamist extremism) were defeated by massive, nonideological, nonsectorial, nonorganized (but coordinated), peaceful (at least in the beginning) social mobilizations, which poured out into public spaces and took control of symbolic places (Tahrir Square in Cairo, Pearl Roundabout in Manama, Change Square in Sanaa).

First, change was fundamentally due to unforeseen (or underreported) social trends, a kind of earlier “pluralism from below” (below the radar of regimes and their autocratic exclusive grip on power), serving as a ground base for mobilizations in 2011. Second, change was also due to the imitation effect across villages, cities, states and borders (with the essential instrumental role of new information technologies and satellite televisions such as al-Jazirah). ⁸

Yet, third, the success or failure of Arab uprisings also depended on whether regimes managed to retain the loyalty of the military. When the police or paramilitary forces usually displayed by regimes to counter demonstrations in public spaces were outnumbered by massive and determined demonstrations, regimes called upon armies. The different trajectories of political development in the Arab world in 2011 were strongly determined by the ways Arab armies reacted to societal uprisings, either refusing to shoot at protesters (thus enabling the end of established regimes) or remaining loyal, at least partly (leading regimes to fight back for their power).

Why did the military act as an ultimate recourse/savior in Tunisia or Egypt (at least at the very beginning in Egypt; then it acted as a powerful stakeholder)? Because, it has been able to keep its coherence under the preceding authoritarian regime; and, in order to keep its coherence at a time of mounting protests, the military refused to engage in wholesale repression when asked by the president to do so. ⁹ The military with its organizational coherence was indeed a crucial pillar of the authoritarian order, whose support was carefully cultivated by the incumbent authoritarian regime with a mixture of control devices and privileges to foster loyalty. ¹⁰ But that did not imply that the military would defend the incumbent ruler right till the end in all circumstances.

The regimes’ call for harsh repression against mass societal mobilizations in 2011 was especially stressful for the militaries. Using lethal force against disarmed and pacific civilians is problematic—and when the number of protesters is large, repression will amount to a bloodbath—because it undermines the image of the military and more importantly it threatens its internal cohesion and discipline. Junior officers and the rank and file are called to open fire on their social equals with whom they may identify. Furthermore, mass opposition, especially when it manifests itself in open defiance of political authority and of its police-based “apparatus of fear,” also tests the loyalties of the military personnel, who might themselves be disenchanted with the regime’s policies. Although military training is designed to secure the complete loyalty of the army to the regime, these stressful factors that undermine morale and discipline are exacerbated by the increased public display of exactions by the regime’s police against civilians, women and children included, with videos posted on the Internet and news spread by familial networks. ¹¹ In 2011 and under such very exceptional circumstances, the military, in some cases, came to balance the organizational coherence it has preserved under authoritarian rule with the dire prospects resulting from its propping up of the regime through massive repression against disarmed civilians.

What kind of preserved organizational coherence did the military display under authoritarian regimes? In a hierarchic organization like the military, the answer lies in the officer corps and its ability to create and preserve coherence. As analyzed by Huntington in 1957, ¹² the military is a closed profession characterized by expertise (specialized knowledge), responsibility (providing a specific service to its society), and corporatism (setting the officers’ corps apart from laymen); there is a “military mind” pervading the officer corps and cultivated in military service, training, schools, and social relations (clubs, various privileges). Conversely, the military’s organizational coherence benefits to the authoritarian status quo, as the loyalist military remains a powerful pillar in the background. These generic features allow, in some cases, the military to survive relatively untouched from the authoritarian past and hence to position itself as a crucial, coherent actor during transitions.

The authoritarian stasis has bequeathed a diminished but untouched military in Tunisia and a powerful yet a-political military in Egypt—both regimes were not military regimes in the strict sense of the term, where high officers participated directly in the formulation of major policy decisions. ¹³ Arab authoritarian regimes were better described as “securitocraties, mukhabarat states, than military regimes. In Tunisia, the military was weakened and marginalized, as compared with the Interior ministry’s apparatus, which was favored and expanded under Ben Ali. ¹⁴ In Egypt, a fine but essential line was drawn between the military as integrated in the political regime (with some officers playing crucial roles in the corridors of power) and the military as an institutional part of the state (with the military as a corps generally abstaining from the dirty task of policing society and public spaces/life, which was left to the Interior ministry). ¹⁵

Furthermore, besides its proclaimed role in external defense, the army has positioned itself as a symbol of the state, carefully cultivating the image of service of the country with its disengagement from the political sphere and concrete decision-making. As stated forcefully by Janowitz in his analysis of the shared identity and values between army and society, ¹⁶ the military has a capacity for developing national identity, though strictly bounded in authoritarian regimes by political imperatives. The military, though a closed sector, has cultivated an image of itself as a guardian of the country’s ideals and as an indispensable supporter of the public sector by performing in emergencies; it has disseminated national myths and symbols as a way to seek to elicit popular identification; it has kept a kind of residual patriotism and aura about its combat experience (Egypt) or its renewed professionalism and strict legalism (Tunisia). As a result, in some cases (Tunisia, Egypt), it has retained some (autonomous) legitimacy without threatening authoritarian regimes (a move that would have unleashed repression in the officers’ corps) ¹⁷ and has been much less delegitimized than other institutions such as the Interior ministry. This feature explains the recurring slogan in the Arab world in 2011 during demonstrations, “the military and the people are one hand” (al-jaich wa al-chaab ayad wahida)—a call by demonstrators addressed to the army to side with protesters against the hated police and paramilitary forces. For the military’s high leadership in 2011, the military’s suppression of massive protests would dangerously threaten that very organizational coherence preserved under authoritarian rule. Then, even the Egyptian military, a corps closely associated with the Mubarak regime, used its considerable unity exhibited while serving as a shadowy pillar of the Mubarak regime to dissociate itself from the fate of Mubarak and his close cronies.

Quite differently, in other cases (Yemen, Syria, Libya) the military, although displaying those features (corporate cohesion, symbol of the state) to some degree, has been weakened by social engineering orchestrated by regimes in the officers’ corps (with the introduction of familial, clannish, tribal, regional, and confessional elements) and by the upgrading of special forces (the most loyal units, better trained, better equipped, who act as “the army of the regime”) in parallel to or inside the regular military. In 2011, regimes facing societal uprisings have then preferably deployed praetorian units (those headed by relatives of president Saleh in Yemen, or by the brother of President Assad, Maher, or those made up about 70 to 80 percent of Alawis, soldiers and officers, in Syria), keeping the regular army as a support device or in barracks for lack of confidence in its loyalty in cases of harsh repression.

And, even in cases where regimes have exerted close social engineering in the officers’ corps (to preclude the emergence of an “autonomous” organizational coherence), time is another essential factor to recount the military’s repression and its increased unease: the longer the military (when it crosses the first steps and rallies around its regime to enter into repression) is engaged in harsh repression against disarmed civilians, the more it fractures. With the resilience of protests in public spaces, and the gradual involvement of more military units, defections have increased, with a split in the Yemeni army and increased defections in Syria (though seemingly not of the scale seen in Yemen at the time of writing; this is however a very controversial topic as a fundamental object of propaganda between the regime and the opposition) leading to the formation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA; al-jaich al-suri al-hurr). ¹⁸ As a result, the military in Libya and in Yemen—as well as, presumably, in Syria in 2012 with the increasing flow of desertions and the increased military efficiency of the FSA—did not act as a source of continuity and stability but became a direct stake for the advance of the transitional progress whose unraveling acted as a measurement of the growing power of opponents to entrenched rulers. In such cases, the military is engulfed in transitions characterized by disorganization veering toward civil war.

From the perspective of facilitator, the military can become a powerful actor in some transitions with its ability to fill a void with its very cohesive presence. Lessons from Latin America or Spain in the 1980s show that the military’s inherent power is at its apex if it is able to display high levels of unity and institutional consensus: coherence among the high officers’ corps (in a very hierarchical organization) becomes especially important if the military wants to pursue an assertive strategy.

When facing the prospect of being engulfed in repression in January 2011, the chief of staff, General Ammar, is reported to have refused orders to open lethal fire at protesters. Then, the army sticking behind him deployed itself, strictly respected its rules of engagement (defined by 2002 internal documents) and strove to maintain order and stability in the streets as the political void following regime collapse was verging on chaos. This required fighting against the presidential guard and members of the police who turned into snipers, shooting haphazardly at demonstrators to recreate “the wall of fear” in public spaces. Hence, the military quickly pushed Ben Ali toward the exit and ended with power in its own hands.

In Egypt, the military leaned toward the incumbent regime as long as it could avoid being fully driven into repression. The military kept a neutral position between protesters and the regime’s thugs (armed camel drivers) on February 2, 2011, the revolution’s ninth day and bloody day. The military rank and file, especially in Tahrir square, was more and more leaning with the demonstrators’ slogans, as exemplified by numerous videos taken by cell phones and posted on the web. But the military leadership to whom President Mubarak belonged seemed to want to give the president every opportunity before asking him to step down. The question of keeping the cohesion of the military corps was at the core of the decision of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF, a body of the twenty-four most senior officers that could theoretically not meet without the president), who met in the absence of the president on February 10, 2011, and forced Mubarak to formally hand power to the SCAF.

At the very moment of regime change, the military positioned itself as the only remaining political actor, because the end of authoritarian regimes was accompanied by a brutal collapse of law and order, leaving an abyssal political void and disorganization. Nebulous social mobilizations without strong leaders could not fill that void. The army was the only institution keeping some coherence in Tunisia and Egypt with the collapse of all other institutions (parliament, ministries, dominant party, police, etc.). Conversely, in Libya, where the weak Libyan military (displaying no organizational coherence) collapsed along with the Qadhafi regime and the whole skeletal state apparatus, the end result was a fierce civil war with some units joining the Benghazi uprising and others being co-opted back by Qadhafi and his clique, until external (North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO]) intervention forced the end of Qadhafi’s nominal rule. The “liberation of the country” on October 23, 2011 (with the fall of Tripoli), was fraught with many challenges, without any institutions to manage the transition.

A caveat should be added. Although coherent, the military is ill at ease and ill prepared to assert itself politically. The Egyptian military is usually painted as a powerful actor having a strong sense of corporatism and self-interest and acting forcefully as a corporate actor. This is true. Yet, this powerful, secretive, and closed sector has also been submitted, as other social sectors in Egypt, to authoritarian rule for decades. The current Egyptian military is the product of thirty years of complex relations with the Mubarak regime, not just of the internal dynamics of an isolated sector. In its relations with the army, authoritarianism has a propensity to produce (among the high officers’ corps) its own creatures, characterized by a mix of unwavering loyalty, caution, and reluctance to change. The endeavors of Arab regimes are geared toward the progressive institutionalization of the military into the authoritarian state apparatus. It entails a mixture of professionalism based on performance, corporate identity, cronyism, patrimonialism, preferential treatment of certain high officers, and passivity toward others. These are the kind of military actors who have been entrusted (or more precisely have entrusted themselves) with forging a new regime in Egypt. Finally, they are not particularly geared toward the political management of a complex country. The Egyptian military did not save Mubarak; but its heavy weight has been felt in the Egyptian polity in the ensuing months, in a very specific setting, that of transition.

Transitions as Negotiations between Civilians and Military Elites

In all cases, according to comparative lessons drawn from cases of past transitions, transition should lead to a shift in power configurations between the military and transitional (civilian) authorities: the nature of the transition outcome is strongly affected by the strength of the forces that helped shape it, in the first place the armed forces, with a wide range of cases (depending on their power, coherence, assertiveness, and symbolic status). Civilian control has to be expanded in such instable transitional settings: it entails a reduction of the scope of military influence (the scope of issues with which the military is concerned) and a gradual removal of the military from societal and political concerns. Civilian democratic control entails the removal of the military from power positions outside the defense area (which has to be redefined and often downsized) and the appointment (and acceptation by military hierarchies) of civilian seniority in defense areas. The military, either as a direct actor or as an actor occupying important positions in the former regime, tries to avoid being subjected to too much civilian control in its (professional, social, or economic) activities whose reach can be extensive. Transition should therefore entail a fundamental restructuring of the way in which the military is inserted into the political system and society and is overseen by civilians. ²⁷ The democratic control of the armed forces is a (best practice) way to try to extricate a polity in transition from such difficulties.

The crux of transition processes is the empowerment of new (or the reemergence of former) civilian politicians. This conversely should lead the military to tolerate the establishment of a political regime it did not favor. As such, reforms on the military cannot be isolated from reforms in society in general aimed at empowering unprepared political actors in a new political system. The democratic control of the armed forces requires a functioning political system, and it cannot be dissociated from the process of (civilian) democratic transition. Islamist parties (al-Nahda in Tunisia, the Muslim Brothers in Egypt) have gained a strong hand in reawakened political systems in 2012. It remains to be seen how they will deal with military topics. At the time of writing, they have left such sensitive issues to technocrats (or neutral figures) in Tunisia, or kept distance from the debate in Egypt (by striking deals with the SCAF or some parts of it, after having pushed old-generation officers toward retirement). But that may be just a way to postpone problems for new emerging civilian politicians, who will have to confront them head-on with a sense of bargaining with the military. In Libya and Yemen (and presumably Syria when the regime falls), the fragmentation of the military or its implosion is a liability (with the need to reinstate a Weberian monopoly on the use of force), but also an asset (when compared with the Egyptian case, e.g., a potent military acting as a stakeholder). The danger lies in the immediate short term with fragments of the armed forces turned into militias roaming in the political scene and overshadowing civilian political actors, or even using their coercive power to obtain political gains. In Syria in the second half of 2012, with increased militarization and the 2011 uprising veering toward full-scale civil war, the Free Syrian Army, staffed with Sunni soldiers and officers from rural background (socially different from urban Sunnis), has sidelined the civilian wing of the uprising, namely urban Sunnis (new generations coming from urban middle classes or those hailing from old notable families) in the Syrian National Council and the Muslim Brothers.

Furthermore, the processes are shakier in the Arab world in 2012, ²⁸ when compared with transitions in Latin America in the 1980s and Eastern Europe after 1989: the later (called pacted transitions) consisted mainly in secret negotiation meetings called “roundtables” in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany in 1989–90, gathering (moderate) incumbent elites from the preceding regime with (moderate) oppositional elites to negotiate power-sharing formulas. That specific setting allowed quicker and more ambiguous understandings (and secret allowed easier understandings) whose whereabouts were overturned in further stages. Transitions in Latin America, from Brazil to Chile, were “controlled transitions”: even in Argentina where the military regime collapsed after a defeat, or in Chile where it was strongly delegitimized with a high degree of civil resistance to military prerogatives, as well as in countries such as Brazil or Peru where the military was traditionally a major political actor, the posttransition regimes were not a continuation of military domination under civilian guise; but the military retained a strong bargaining clout in negotiations with other political elites.

In 2012 in the Arab world, societies are present in public spaces, vocal, and impatient. Societies have taken an increased “voice” in their destiny with uprisings and do not want to let go their new role by secret dealings between would-be political actors, as exemplified by the recurrent mobilizations on place Tahrir. The recurrent motto in the first half of 2012 has been the end of military rule (the people want the overthrow of Marshall Tantawi [the leader of the SCAF], al chaab yourid isqat al-muchir Tantawi).

In the context of social anguishes and heightened socioeconomic difficulties in the Arab world in 2012, those who do not see the bettering of their own situation will add their voices to demonstrators and increase the salience of stakes. Popular mobilization creates a widespread sense that there are alternatives to the former authoritarian order and a mandate for change (quite differently from negotiations of “pacts” between former elites and emerging ones). But such settings also contain a potential for radicalization that should be avoided. Radicalization can offer the military a justification to reclaim large chunks of power in the transitional political system (by projecting an image of civilian politicians unable to govern). Such prospect was looming in Egypt (until the inauguration of President Morsy in June 2012), where the SCAF denounced plots against Egypt and positioned itself as the guardian of the country in official media outlets in the first half of 2012.

Civilian control of the military is a complex process of negotiations. Whatever their posture as a stakeholder or as a powerful power broker, in contexts of early transition, armies have a tendency to negotiate some levels of autonomy. Autonomy is a natural consequence of professional evolution in any organization. Every profession needs some autonomy to manage its own functional domain, including the military. As such, it often goes unnoticed. Yet, professional autonomy for the military corps can also engender an aggressive assertion of military prerogatives and be a recipe for praetorianism, contrary to Huntington’s view that military professionalism fosters political subordination of the military to civilian authorities. ²⁹ Especially in transitional contexts, the military looks for guarantees that secure its autonomy and protect itself from external (civilian) control.

There are various dimensions of military autonomy ranging from personal decisions on promotions or appointments, budgetary shares, military doctrine, military education, military modernization, arms production and procurement, defense organization to more politicized items such as the role of the military in intelligence, internal security, and ever more sensitive issues such as political repression and judiciary supervision. ³⁰ The scope of military autonomy/power can then spill over from purely military matters to political prerogatives, to socioeconomic privileges ³¹ and to a cultural presence.

Along this scale, the military can have a tendency to assert itself and expand its domain and its requirements. And the distance from functional autonomy to the aggressive defense of prerogatives and praetorianism is often elusive. In transitional contexts where all stakes are open, the military has a tendency to protect its autonomous realm and define for itself expanded veto powers. In Latin America in the 1980s, the military has tried to influence the transition agenda with electoral mechanisms (Brazil, Chile), constitutional restrictions (Chile), banning of some political parties (Ecuador, Uruguay), or special guarantees for its future influence and amnesties for its past practices when in power (violations of human rights). In Latin America, the military has retained some strong centers of power and its formal departure from political power should not be equated with “the democratic control of the armed forces” because the military has retained substantial margins of autonomy. Military autonomy tends nowadays to be synonymous with the presence of certain prerogatives and exclusive privileges within a given (civilian) order rather than a desire to rule . . . quite differently from the 1960 to 1970s in Latin America or the 1950s in the Middle East when the military was seen (and saw itself) as a modern sector when the political system was underdeveloped and locked into petty conflicts among high elites, hence the temptation of coup d'état.

The size of the military is an essential intervening factor: the Tunisian and Libyan militaries are small forces, quite differently from other Arab countries where huge military establishments have been the rule (in Egypt, Yemen, and Syria). Another related factor is the military conception of their role in their respective polity: the military can harbor a conflated vision of itself as the protector of stability and a self-inflated sense of its historical worth as an element of state building (especially in Egypt and Syria). Military officers during transitions, even when they do not fall to the appeals of their more ideological comrades, display a sense of blame or even despise toward the whims of unexperimented civilian politicians who are caught in complex political squabbles. In Egypt in 2011 and quite differently from Portugal in 1974 where the generations of low officers in the military (those who had been engaged in colonial wars) were intent on breaking sharply with the previous regime, the military is not a revolutionary actor—the Free Syrian Army might approach the Portuguese model if transition occurs and if it succeeds in winning the loyalty of large chunks of the Syrian army; on the contrary, the Egyptian military stands for the maintenance of fundamental continuities with the Mubarak regime it sustained. The military has retained strong (individual or collective) interests, privileges, or prerogatives: the greater the regime relied on the military as a backbone (Egypt as compared with Tunisia), the larger these military interests were (as exemplified by the expanded economic wing of the Egyptian army). The Egyptian military knows that after Mubarak some changes will be inevitable, but the actual amount of change is unexpected for the military and the military inevitably seeks to assist in shaping the contours of the new regime to protect itself from external (civilian) scrutiny.

The process of defining the limits of military autonomy has been a political struggle between military elites and civilian rulers in Latin America in the 1980s, hence different levels of military autonomy exist until now. In Egypt, we can witness the unfolding of such developments in 2012. The debate on the so-called supraconstitutional principles (also called the El Selmi document), in March and then in November 2011 (an attempt to put the military above the constitution with respect to certain aspects) is indicative of a strong will by the SCAF to protect the military from external, especially budgetary scrutiny. When the Parliament was elected in June 2012, the SCAF handed over legislative power, then recovered it, after the democratically elected Parliament was dissolved by a ruling of the Supreme Constitutional Court (a group of unelected judges stacked in its favor, who ruled that the Parliament was elected on an unconstitutional law); the SCAF handed over executive power to the civilian elected president (for the fist time in Egypt since 1952) Mohammed Morsy on June 30, 2012; but the SCAF issued a few days before a “supplementary constitutional declaration,” that states that the president will not be able to declare war without first seeking permission from the SCAF, that the president will not control what is going on in the military corps, that the military will have a huge say in the writing of the future constitution (and that any objection between the military and other actors on the constitution will be decided by the Supreme Constitutional Court), hence denying Morsy most of his executive powers. Then, President Morsy stroke back on August 12, 2012, by reasserting the powers of the presidency in a dramatic fashion: he issued his own “constitutional declaration” superseding that of the SCAF and cut a deal (a modus vivendi) with the military (see above) to put himself in firm control (at least on paper). Civilian control should not be taken for granted, even when a return to authoritarianism seems unthinkable, because the democratic control of the armed forces is a protracted political struggle.

A few words should be added on the so-called Turkish model, which is said to represent a panacea with the military playing the role of guardian in transition processes. A kind of mythology has inflated around the Turkish model in 2011. Yet, this is a vague analogy, which is not the preferred choice for the majority of Egyptians. Some officers of the SCAF have floated the idea of replicating the Turkish model in Egypt; and it was rumored in November 2011 that the SCAF has ordered the 1982 Turkish constitution (redacted under military guidance after the 1980 coup d’état) to be translated into Arabic. The Turkish army has positioned itself as a kind of guardian of the Turkish republic. The Turkish General Staff intervened four times (1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997) to reestablish order, undermine governments, or issue intimidations. The Turkish military returned the government back to the civilians, but it has kept a close eye on numerous prerogatives through the Milli Guvenlik Kurulu (National Security Council, MGK). It even barred the road to power to various groups it perceived as a threat to the Turkish republic (Kurds, Islamists). It has even been involved in “dirty tricks,” as exemplified by numerous scandals (the latest being the Ergenekon scandal). ³² Hence, the military guardianship in the Turkish polity has taken a very offensive meaning, what is called in Turkey “the deep state” (Derin Devlet). And Turkey has democratized in spite of (or even against) the military’s influence: Turkey began reforms in 2002 to meet the European Union (EU)’s requirements (the so-called Copenhagen criteria) to begin membership negotiations that entailed reigning in the Turkish military; and the conservative Islamic AK (Justice and Development) party in power has used the prospect of Turkey at the gates of the EU to dismantle the remnants of direct military guidance. ³³ Any rapid talk about a so-called Turkish model should keep in mind these various dimensions of military influence in Turkey, far from the rosy picture of the military as a neutral guardian.

Conclusion: The Way Forward

As a conclusion, reaching an adequate (namely, one that sustains democratic values and processes) level of democratic control of the armed forces is a tall order. In the Arab world, none of the authoritarian regimes were military regimes per se though they often originated from the military and kept close relations with it: conversely, the military was an essential backbone for the regime and adapted itself to regimes with various forms of accommodation and privileges. The military is present in one form or another as an actor in transitions in 2012, most prominently in cases of huge militaries such as in Egypt. And, as exemplified by Libya, the absence of a coherent military is more a problem than a hopeful tabula rasa (as the void is filled by fragmented militias). A fractured military as in Yemen (and presumably in Syria when the Assad regime falls) is also problematic because it gives birth to rival militias that can instill themselves into political (civilian) processes and can lead to the emergence of new political actors whose militias act as a “life insurance” for them to get a substantial share of the political “pie” (Iraq under Nouri al-Maliki after the fierce civil war in 2005–06 is an example).

Much more than the application of clear-cut recipes, the ultimate key to the democratic control of the armed forces in the Arab world is the playing out of contradictions between military and civilian elites. It entails the emergence of a solid and substantive (legitimate) civilian leadership, a difficult element in countries where the lack of competent cadres is striking. The most serious case is Libya (and presumably Syria). Tunisia may posit itself as an exception with a rapidly functioning political system. But everywhere in the Arab world, there is a powerful social thrust emerging from both elites and young generations to empower themselves, rebuild their country, and take their destiny into their own hands.

The military might act as a powerful stakeholder, even as a force with counterrevolutionary tendencies. Yet, during this process, the military is also to be submitted to a learning process. The formal departure of the military from power in Latin America in the 1980s did not represent the end of military influence; but, the military has evolved and the military is nowadays less interested in confronting civilians about national policy or in overthrowing regimes; it is more concerned with protecting its institutional well-being and privileges, and a return to military rule is not necessarily in the corporate interests of the military. ⁵¹ The Tunisian military has learned a lot from recent decades and has chosen a strict legalist posture. The Egyptian military does not seem to be at this stage of learning in 2012, but it has been strongly embarrassed remaining in a powerful political position after the revolution of January 2011 (the less visible the military in powerful positions is, the better it fares, a motto the Egyptian military applied for thirty years under President Mubarak); that might explain the SCAF’s quick acquiescence to its reigning in by President Morsy in August 2012.

What is at stake is a redefinition of the role of the military in the Arab world. From the 1970s to 2011, an intimate nexus between the state and the military was at the core of Arab authoritarian regimes. In such military-backed authoritarian regimes, power was structured exclusively from the executives, in a model of unanimous systems. That unanimity was broken by sudden revolutions in 2011. Yet, quite differently from textbook (previous) revolutions that installed a new revolutionary elite in power when they were successful, Arab uprisings broke down unanimous powers, but they have replaced it with an equilibrium between different forces—in Egypt: the military, the Muslim Brothers, the revolutionaries, and the remnants of the old regime; in Libya a very fragmented political scene with armed revolutionary groups, regional differences; in Yemen, tribes, a fragmented state, and secessionist movements, along with Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula inroads—with no group gaining a decisive hegemony on the others. The important point is that the redefinition of the role of the military has to be carried out through political means and arguments (deliberation) for democratic control of the armed forces (hence democratization) to proceed further and to consolidate. I have offered three benchmarks (not to be understood as ready-made recipes) to understand ways countries in transition in the Arab world might travel if they move in the direction of democracy . . .