Can Military Governments be a good thing (for a while)?
So the Egyptian Military is going to stand by "the people", as one Egyptian put it, and pressure Morsi to step down (maybe).
My question to the audience is this "Do military coups and temporary military governments get a bad rap?" Does the military, in places like Turkey and Thailand, ensure a less bloody transition than other alternatives. Is this something Westerner's should take another look at (or even tacidly encourage)?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/wo...s&src=igw&_r=0
Isn't this the old Jeanne Kirkpatrick argument....
....on autocratic governments vs. tyrannical governments?
Am I getting this wrong?
Anyway, when did we ever stop supporting military governments if we thought the military was the magical key to stability? (Witness our relationship with Musharraf, who did a number on us).
This might be entirely too glib, but is Egypt about to "go Pakistan", or is this more like the run up to the Algerian civil war? I hope neither.
Quote:
For most of the 1980s, as perhaps Ronald Reagan's most influential foreign-policy adviser, she supported military interventions, covert proxy wars, the coddling of anti-communist dictators and the full-blooded, unapologetic pursuit of America's national interests. Asked 20 years later about Iraq, old age or greater wisdom seemed to have tamed her. George Bush junior was “a bit too interventionist for my taste”. As for moral imperialism, “I don't think there is one scintilla of evidence that such an idea is taken seriously anywhere outside a few places in Washington, DC.”
Certain sentences from her most famous article, “Dictatorships and Double Standards”—written on her summer holiday in France, published in Commentary magazine in November 1979—now induce a sigh. “No idea holds greater sway in the mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to democratise governments, anytime and anywhere, under any circumstances.” “Decades, if not centuries, are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits. In Britain, the road [to democratic government] took seven centuries to traverse.” “The speed with which armies collapse, bureaucracies abdicate, and social structures dissolve once the autocrat is removed frequently surprises American policymakers.” Yes indeed.
http://www.economist.com/node/8447241
Some events are beyond the ability for us to control, guide, etc. We can only watch events play out and keep mind of basic interests. And each event is contingent. And both support for hurried democratization AND support for military coups has come back to haunt us, again and again.
What does the original small wars journal say?
I don't have a copy and would love to know.
As far as I can see, military coup is just another option for a bloodless transition. It depends on the motivation of the military. I don't think it needs to be automatically and arbitrarily attacked.
I like the model the Egyptian's have take so far. The choice of the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court was a nice choice.
For a long time the Turkish military guaranteed secular government that Ataturk tried to establish. That kind of dedication to an ideal can act as a stabilizing factor or it can be used to gain personal political power.
Why and how makes all the difference.
Being a military man, I would like to think that the military that understands its role as a servant of the country (however you define THAT term), can step in when the alternative is a decent into civil war. There has to be other options.
I wonder if things had been different in Syria had the military not sided with Assad. I realize that is fantasy, but it begs the question of when the military has a duty to protect the population, even from its own government.
I take an oath to the Constitution, and then to the President and the Officers appointed over me. I prefer to think that, in other parts of the world, military men think the same way. I realize this has shades of "Starship Troopers", but reality can be stranger than fiction.
British Officer's Oath and Regicide
Dave, how is Cromwell's "coup" remembered in British civil and military history?