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?
Worth reading and watching
Two contrasting, but similar commentaries. The first is by a Conservative MEP, Daniel Hannan and has some telling passages, like this:
Quote:
There is no such thing as a good coup, only bad coups and worse coups. All military regimes, in time, become tawdry and self-serving. Whatever intentions the army officers begin with, they end up as petty tyrants. An elected ruler is kept in check by the knowledge that he can be fired. Take that knowledge away and, however pure his motives, he will end up arranging the affairs of state around his personal convenience.
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...ntentions.html
A BBC Newsnight commentary, four minutes or so, which gives a very quick overview of 'Egypt crisis: Does political Islam have a future?':http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23736446
Business is better with the generals?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TheCurmudgeon
This offers another interesting perspective. If the major problems in the company are economic and if the military has experience in business, does this not provide another argument for the military?
Somehow I have m' doubts that a serving or retired Egyptian soldier has excellent commercial acumen, more likely via the state apparatus he'd have an "insider's track" on investments, such as a property development. In a wide-ranging critique from the 'left' Nick Cohen commented:
Quote:
To add robbery to murder, it has built a military-industrial complex that keeps Egyptians poor by preventing new businesses competing with the elite monopolies it controls.
Link:http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...-west-response
1 Attachment(s)
Variant Voices - and Data
Starting with the Egyptian Army and its "grip" on the economy, the title says it all, Egypt military fights for macaroni, as well as security - Estimates of the Egyptian military's share of the country's economy range from 5% to 40% and its hands reach into many industries, including mining, real estate, farming and the production of household appliances (USA Today, 17 Aug 2013).
5% would make it a significant, material factor in the economy; 40% would make it an oligopolist, heading toward effective monopoly control. Which is the more factual case ? I don't know.
Then we have Gen. al-Sisi; for whom, we have two original source documents - the first, this year; the other in 2006: Excerpts from Washington Post interview with Egyptian Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi; and Democracy in the Middle East (US Army War College, 2006).
Based on these (and other sources), we have two opinions that Gen. al-Sisi is an "Islamist":
Sisi's Islamist Agenda for Egypt - The General's Radical Political Vision (Foreign Affairs, Robert Springborg, July 28, 2013).
Why Egyptian Putschist General Al-Sisi’s Anti-Secular U.S. Army War College Thesis Matters (Andrew Bostrom, 10 Aug 2013).
Portrait of the General as a Not-So-Young Grad Student: Egypt's army chief isn't an Islamist -- in fact, his work at the U.S. Army War College suggests he may be a Mubarak clone (Foreign Policy, Eric Trager, 7 Aug 2013).
and these are just a sampling of divergent pundits.
Attached are pp.14-15 of al-Sisi's War College thesis (only 17 pages total). Based on his 2006 comments, I'd tag him as a moderate Muslim - though not a secularist. I see more than a little bit of Nassar in al-Sisi (the "masses", a Middle East "EU"; focus on Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen).
Regards
Mike
When it is appropriate to act ...
From an article entitled "Egypt’s Military: Doing What Germany’s Should Have Done in 1933"
Quote:
Sudanese writer Al-Hajj Warraq, got it exactly right in an Egyptian television interview last year. He said:
Democracy is about more than just the ballot box. Democracy is a culture engraved upon the cerebral box before it is the ballot box. One cannot talk about freedom in the absence of free minds. The tragedy of the Arab Spring is that when the tyrannical regimes fell, the fruits were reaped by movements that preach closed-mindedness, rather than free thinking. The outcome will be regimes that are worse than those that were toppled.
Apparently, the Egyptian people – at least the 30 million who were in the streets marching against Morsi – agreed with him. Unfortunately, the United States has not.