Politicians at Arms: Civilian Recruitment of Soldiers for Middle East Coups

• Date: 01 October 2019
• Published date: 01 October 2019
• Author: Drew Holland Kinney
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X18777983
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Politicians at Arms:

Civilian Recruitment

of Soldiers for Middle

East Coups

Drew Holland Kinney

1

Abstract

Why would politicians recruit soldiers for military coups d’e

´tat? The civil–military

relations literature assumes politicians aspire to supremacy over the military;

enabling praetorianism would risk their future rule. While civil–military relations

widely recognizes the empirical fact of civilian participation in military takeovers, no

study specifies or theorizes the topic. This essay examines the conditions in which

politicians recruit soldiers to seize power by investigating the understudied processes

of military takeovers. Using British Foreign Office documents, Arabic language

memoirs, and Polity data, I find that civilian statesmen in Iraq (1936) and Syria (1951)

could not tolerate their civilian rivals’ incumbency but were unable to challenge them

peacefully, so they recruited like-minded officers for coups. This suggests that while

politicians do not necessarily want the army in the chambers, they sometimes favor

praetorianism to the continued rule of their civilian opponents.

Keywords

civil–military relations, coups and conflicts, Middle East, Arab militaries

Why would civilian politicians recruit soldiers for military coups d’e´tat? The con-

cept of civilian control in civil–military relations (CMR) implies parliamentarians

have a preference for limited military influence in political affairs; they should not

1

Department of Political Science, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Drew Holland Kinney, Department of Political Science, Syracuse University, 100 Eggers Hall, Syracuse,

NY 13244, USA.

Email: dhkinney@syr.edu

Armed Forces & Society

2019, Vol. 45(4) 681-701

ªThe Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X18777983

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want to share power with officers. This essay is about the understudied processes of

coups, specifically the puzzle of civilian-recruited coups. While politicians do not

necessarily want the army in the chambers, they sometimes prefer praetorianism to

the rule of their civilian rivals.

Using British Foreign Office (FO) documents, Ara bic language memoirs and

manifestos, and Polity data, this essay finds that Iraqi and Syrian politicians were

too polarized to countenance their civilian opponents’ incumbency but unable to

compete freely and fairly in elections, so they recruited soldiers for coups. In 1936,

Iraqi politician Hikmat Suleyman and his Ahali movement encouraged General Bakr

al-Sidqi to replace Yasin al-Hashimi and hand the government to Suleyman. Syrian

politician Akram al-Hawrani helped Colonel Adib al-Shishakli unseat Ma’aruf

Dawalibi in 1951.

Based on these cases, this article discusses three implications for research on

military politics. First, we cannot fully understand coups if we focus too heavily on

ambitious officers. Second, politician-recruited coups enable praetorianism

because it alters soldiers’ perceptions of their opportunity to intervene.

1

Third,

civilian political bodies cannot form a united front in order to reduce the military’s

influence over political affairs if certain politicians benefit from the army’s con-

tinued interference. The article concludes by raising three additional questions for

future research.

Coup Dynamics in the Arab World

Researchers devoted many volumes to Middle East militaries during the region’s

wave of postwar coups (e.g., Haddad, 1971; Khadduri, 1953; Perlmutter, 1970;

Petran, 1972; Torrey, 1964), but public and academic attention to Arab armies ebbed

(Assaf & Barak, 2010; Jumbert & Ka

˚rtveit, 2014) with some well-known exceptions

(e.g., Bellin, 2004; Cook, 2007; Picard, 1990; Quinlivan, 1999). Arab militaries’

influence during the 2011 rebellions rejuvenated their study (e.g., Abul-Magd &

Grawert, 2016; Albrecht, 2014; Albrecht & Bishara, 2011; Bellin, 2012; Droz-

Vincent, 2011, 2013; Gause, 2011; Lutterbeck, 2013; Makara, 2013; Pion-Berlin,

Esparza, & Grisham, 2014). This article speaks to two areas of research that have

found fresh breath: Arab armies’ intervention into and extrication from political life

(Jumbert & Ka

˚rtveit, 2014). By using postcolonial cases, the study seriously takes

the call to go “beyond the sudden fall of autocratic leaders” (Jumbert & Ka

˚rtveit,

2014, p. 1).

Civilian Politicians and Military Coups

Researchers have devoted little attention to coup dynamics, the processes of military

takeovers (Singh, 2014), such as coup recruitment (Ferguson, 1987; Luttwak, 1979).

In particular, the types and levels of civilian involvement in coups are undertheor-

ized. While the field of CMR widely recognizes the empirical fact of civilian

682 Armed Forces & Society 45(4)