Soldiers of Democracy? (S. 13, Ep. 17)

[Music] Hi, I'm Mark Lentz, Director of the project on Middle East political science. Welcome to the Middle East political science podcast. On this week's episode, we're joined by Sharon Grueh, William & Mary, also of Harvard Kennedy Schools Middle East initiative this year, and author of the brand new book, "Soldiers of Democracy", "Military Legacies in the Arab Spring", also by Oxford University Press. Sharon, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, it's an honor to be here. Well, it's great to see this book out. It's timely where we are now, you know, ten years after the military coup in Egypt, a couple years after what happened in Cheneja with Kaisid, and you've been working on this book about militaries and politics. Tell us a little bit about it, how did you get there, what made you want to write this book? Yeah, you know, I didn't intend to write this book, I didn't plan to write about the military. I actually, I had been inspired by the Arab Spring, inspired by this push for democratization, and when I started the PhD was 2013, 2014, curious therefore about why Tunisia seemed to be succeeding, coming the success story while Egypt had quickly failed into a military coup. And so I was curious about that puzzle and what was different about Tunisia, but I hadn't actually started by thinking it was the military. My initial hypothesis going in was that it was about the Islamists in the two countries, that enough that was just more moderate, more inclusive, more willing to compromise. But once I finally went to Tunisia in 2014 and every year since and started doing interviews, I noticed that the same mistrust even hate for Anatha remained in Tunisia, despite it being more moderate, more willing to compromise, and that in 2013, you had the same moment for a coup. You had mass protests calling for the fall of the Anatha led government. You even had opposition leaders meet with military generals asking them to intervene. And so what I realized in those initial trips was that the military was the more important factor. The opportunity for a coup was there in both countries, and it was only because the military didn't intervene in Tunisia in 2013, that there was the opportunity for a national dialogue and for civil society to start to mediate, that the more important factor I felt was the role of the military. And I wasn't also satisfied with the existing explanation out there that the Tunisian military is just a political and professional, and Egypt's military is just politicized. I felt like there was a little bit more to the story. And so when I finally started to interview some of the retired officers in Tunisia, I realized that while professionalism was an important component of it, there were also some additional elements to why they behaved the way they did during the revolution and transition. And so the focus of the book became to explain military behavior, why Egypt and Tunisia's military is responded to the revolution the way they did, why they responded to the transition the way they did, and why ultimately in Tunisia they closed the parliament as well in 2021. So before we get to Egypt and Tunisia specifically, one of the things you do in the book is you ground this within kind of a full scale analysis of militaries and politics and try and like really do a global cross national study of how militaries behave, you survey the literature, tell us a little bit about what you did and how that led you to the kinds of arguments you make in the book. So I wanted the book to be more than just Egypt and Tunisia. I wanted to see if there was something about my argument in those two countries that might also generalize globally as well. And so I was reading the literature on civil military relations on how dictators deal with their militaries, how militaries then respond to revolutions and I felt like there was a missing piece here, which is that we normally think that dictators couproof their militaries and that means that they employ all these different range of tactics, you counterbalance, you divide and rule, you buy off some of the officers and we kind of think that you could prove where you don't. But what I was trying to show is that Egypt and Tunisia represented two different strategies of couproofing in Tunisia, you have what we, I think traditionally think of as couproofing, which is you marginalized the military, you build up instead national guard, presidential guard, the police and you keep the military two week to stage a coup, unable to overpower these counterbalancing forces. But in Egypt, it was another strategy, which we can also consider couproofing, which was to keep the military satisfied, to give the military everything that it wanted, to give them a large budget and high salaries, to give them political influence positions across the government ministers, governors, ambassadors to grant the military a role in the economy. And all of that served to couproof the military to keep it satisfied with its position that it was already the center of power under a binassar and wasadette, hosting a bubadaq such that it didn't see any interest in ousting them. You've got that great quote from Al-Gazala where he's basically like, why would I do that, I'm happy. Precisely, which originally came from Hasim Kandiel's book, which is one that I drew upon so, so much during the course of the research. And so these two strategies I felt were two ways that dictators can couproof. And the theory that I started to develop was that these two strategies create two different types of militaries that are going to react very differently to democratization. If the military has been at the center of the regime, if they had been empowered by the dictator and joining power and wealth, they're going to lose that under democratization. Under democracy, it's going to be civilians in charge, no longer military officers as president, as defense minister, having veto power over security policy. It's going to encroach on their political power, on their material power as well. Newly elected governments are going to be accountable to their electorate. They may have to redistribute some of the excess military budget to their supporters. They might try to have transparency over the military economy. And so empowered militaries are set to lose under democratization. And that's going to make democratization more difficult. So what I argue is that if you have empowered the military, like in Egypt, but also like in Turkey historically, Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan, etc., etc. These empowered militaries make democratization more difficult, more likely to repress uprisings. And if that fails, more likely to stage coups during democratic transitions. By contrast, you've got the really nice summarizer, really nicely in the book, I thought, were you basically break it down, say some of these militaries have a will, but not the capacity, the other type has the capacity, but not the will. Precisely. And so empowered militaries under dictatorship have, they're strong enough to stage a coup, but they don't have the interest, they don't have the will, but the marginalized militaries have the will to stage a coup, but don't have the capacity to do so. And so those marginalized militaries are going to respond very differently to democratization. They had been neglected, resentful of the dictator. And so when democratization emerges, they're more likely to side with the people and not this dictator that marginalized them. Subsequently, during the transition, I argue that they're actually likely to gain from the transition because they had been so neglected underfunded counterbalanced under dictatorship, they're actually going to see their budgets increase, they're actually going to see even their political influence increase, they're going to have representation in a security council where they can give their advice in a way that prior to dictatorship, they had been completely neglected also from politics. And so I argue that in that democratization is easier when you have this marginalized military that you're inheriting. But I also argue that these marginalized militaries come with some risks of their own. That is, they're more likely I argue to go along with an incumbent takeover when the president asks them, for instance, to close the parliament like they did in Tunisia. I argue that their marginalization makes them more likely to go along with that and we can get into that in a minute. And a second risk of marginalized militaries is that they're more likely to fall to civil war. They're not as strong to overpower the rebels. They probably had divide and rule internally to keep them marginalized and that might also splinter. And so although democratization is easier with marginalized militaries, it also comes with these heightened risks of incumbent takeovers and civil wars. And so I show in a cross national large analysis globally that that's what happens. These empowered militaries make democratization more difficult, more likely to repress, more likely to stage coups, whereas marginalized militaries are easier to democratize with but come with these heightened risks as well. Now one of the things you point out I think quite nicely is that it's not just a matter of choice right I mean dictators do choose how to design the militaries, but you identify certain factors that make them more likely to go in one direction rather than the other. Yeah, and it's perhaps counterintuitive that you often have even military officers decide to marginalize the military rather than empower it. And so I argue that it doesn't quite fit into regime types, whether it's a military party, your personalist regime, which is the way that comparativists currently bring in the military, which is in terms of democratization, which is that military regimes are the ones that are difficult to democratize with. But I argue that it's more than just, you know, is the president of military officer, is there a military hunter at the top that it's more so about how you treat the military. And so how you treat it, why they treat the military the way they do is something I explore in both the theory and the cross national chapter. And I argue that it comes down to a number of different factors one is threat perceptions if you need the military also to counter external threats or you need them also to counter internal threats, you might be more likely to empower the military that's going to be your strategy for keeping the military controlled but also useful for countering threat. But that that alone was not determinative either you have plenty of militaries that need to fight off external and internal threats and yet still are marginalized and counterbalanced to knee to some degree in that they had had security threats from France initially from Libyan Algeria later from internal Sullivan, you stuff and his supporters at the start you had security threats and yet. But Giba chose to marginalize the military and you could also say Saddam Hussein had major security threats and yet chose to counterbalance and marginalize the military, privileging the Republican guard and special Republican guard instead. And so security threats weren't determinative either and so I also felt personal preferences of the dictator matter how he chooses to respond to those security threats. As well as some colonial legacies even when it's the first dictator upon coming to power when you think they have a relatively blank slate to decide which one to pursue there are these legacies as well in terms of whether independence was achieved through a war of independence, which is going to give the military legitimacy and make them harder therefore to marginalize. Or are you inheriting a military from the colonial power did the colonial power build up an officer or that you then inherit to become your military upon independence that's also going to make marginalizing it much more difficult and so what I argue is that all of these factors come into play in determining do you marginalize during power the military upon independence your personal preferences your security threats these colonial legacies they all shape this decision but once you've made the decision. It creates vested interests in its maintenance that it becomes path dependent once it's chosen at independence once you've empowered the military it's hard to put that genie back in the bottle it's hard to then marginalize them later on and once you've marginalized the military you've created vested interests in other apparatuses in the police that is counterbalancing them in the party that is counterbalancing and that those forces are also going to resist you trying to change the marginalization later on and so once you choose the strategy it remains relatively path dependent short of course of any critical junctures and other major shocks to the system. I don't know one of the things you point out and again I think we kind of know this but the numbers you put out there are pretty pretty stark that you know military coups really are one of the most common ways that leaders in 20th century onward have been ousted compared to you know democratization or external war so this focus on coo proofing then becomes a key part of survival strategy it's not something which seems to be kind of hypothetical or optional look at the history of the Cold War look at the history of the region and you can see why there's so much emphasis on coo proofing but you really then you go in you try and talk as you mentioned before about there's this whole menu of ways one might go about coo proofing but it's not really just a menu the way you describe it there's logics of how you go about doing it walk us through that a little bit and what are the choices that the that the dictator is facing as he well I guess it's always he is like trying to figure out how to coo proofing so the choices they have to make immediately are what budget am I going to give the military and what political power am I going to give the military what ministerial positions for instance those are the immediate decisions and what I argue is that your choice there shapes the additional proofing tactics that you can do onto the military if you've chosen to give them a large budget you probably also we're going to begin to be giving them a large share of political power because now you've made them strong and they're able to negotiate for a larger role in politics as well and so I show that those two first of all go together strong militaries tend to be strong in terms of material power but also in terms of political power. Then the next decision you might want to make is do I build up counter balancing forces to the military do I build up the national guard presidential guard police etc to try to cage in the military that's going to be very difficult if you decided to empower the military they're going to resist you building up a counter balancing force that's taking away the budget and power that they think they should have and so counter balancing I find is a tactic that's more common with marginalizing the military as opposed to empowering it. And then you have additional proofing tactics in the menu such as stacking do you put your in group into the officer core do you pursue the Bashad al-Assad route and half as al-Assad route before him of stacking the military with alloys with the his ethnic minority and that strategy I find is also easier when you've empowered the military. If the military is enjoying power and wealth it's easier for you to attract your in group into the military's ranks if you've marginalized the military by contrast it's difficult to get your supporters to join a military that has low salaries no political influence and so I show for instance in Tunisia that what he wanted to stack the military with his supporters the elite families coming from the coastal regions. And yet those families didn't find a military career attractive and instead he had to settle for instead privileging the few elite coastal officers who did join to the top but he couldn't stack the military fully with his supporters and so stacking as well is the strategy that is I show is associated with empowering the military rather than marginalizing it so what I try to do is to show that these. Cooper from tactics that we currently view as a menu of interchangeable options that you could pursue whenever you want actually fall into these two different logics more likely with empowerment or more likely with marginalization. But one last component of the theory which I want to talk about before we get into the cases is the kind of the big bug bear of the civil military relations literature professionalism and this idea that some some some some militaries are more professional than others less politicized than others tell me how you approach that in the book. Similarly that it is shaped by the coup proofing strategy that you've chosen in the same way that if you empower the military it has some knock on effects in terms of its composition it's more easily that you can stack it with your elite supporters similarly this choice to empower marginalized the military has knock on effects on professionalism. The military that you've empowered that have a role in governance that are enjoying positions as ministers as governors come to view that as their rightful place in politics that that is part of their professional mission that they should be the guardian of the state they should have those positions as governor as ministers and the lower officers the cadets that are joining the military they're looking up to the senior ranks to see what's appropriate what's normal in a military. And if they're seeing the senior officers are becoming ministers becoming governors they're going to view that as part of professionalism that that's their professional mission is to also have this guardianship role in the state and so empowerment I argue is associated with these more politicized conceptions of professionalism while by contrast if you've marginalized the military if you've kept them out of politics they're more likely to view that as normal as desire of the state. And so that's not the case as a professional as desirable as professional that they should be out of politics and that likewise has these socialization effects in the younger cadets as they're starting to join to think this is the normal route for a military and so professional while both of these militaries might actually consider themselves professional and I think that's important even Egypt's military views itself as professional what they mean by professional is very different in terms of whether it allows for this political role this guard is going to be a very important role for the military. And so that's a very important role for the political role this guardianship role or whether it discourages that sort of involvement in politics and governments. Great so that gives I think a nice frame for for your your focus to case comparison and you started off when you introduced the book you you explained you know why you came to Egypt and so Asia kind of a lot of people in our field did you know kind of that comparison is just kind of like there for the taking. So I think a little bit about how you went about studying this kind of your the data you drew on methods you know what what do you actually do what you find which allowed you to make these novel arguments about the role military. So once I started to think it was the military that was the major factor in these two cases as opposed to the Islam as a secularist or the civil society I started there in terms of interviewing the political parties and civil society. But then once I realized the military was more important I needed to make inroads there as well and so I began in Tunisia by trying to find the retired officers first those who were involved in the media. Involved in civil society organizations themselves post revolution Tunisian officers retired officers began to establish retired officers associations began to establish some think tanks to comment on security issues and so I started there in terms of finding retired officers and from there it snowballed into finding additional officers. There were quite receptive actually to introducing me to others it was at a time I think I was I got there at the right time in terms of 2014 2015 the Tunisian military wanted to tell its story of how why Tunisia became the success story why they didn't stay a jacquoo and so it they were very open in a way that maybe now some interview fatigue might have set in. But at the time they were willing to to to refer me to others and so I was able to interview almost 60 Tunisian retired officers and build trust with them over months of interviews and that ultimately opened up another avenue for the research which was to do a survey of the retired officers association in Tunisia after a year of building up trust with. The leaders of this retired officers association they let me do a survey of their members as well they emailed it out they had physical copies of the survey at the association and so the fact allowed me to do the first survey of the military as well of roughly 70 or so retired officers in Tunisia. But I couldn't do something similar in Egypt it had become too dangerous by the time I started my PhD 2013 2014 to try to do interviews with the retired military in Egypt and more importantly to try to do a similar survey of retired officers in Egypt and so I by the middle and towards the end of the PhD I tried to think of a more creative way that maybe we could also survey some Egyptian military personnel. And the way I decided to go about it was to try to leverage Facebook to try to buy advertisements on Facebook that would advertise a survey. A methodology that's become quite commonplace in political science for recruiting convenience samples of the population can buy relatively cheap ads on Facebook that advertise a survey. But what I tried to do was to target the ads that you when you buy an ad on Facebook to advertise a survey you can specify what country you want to survey what gender what age. But you can also specify what interests you're hoping to to oversample and so you can specify that they're interested in the military or that they have a career in the military that they list the ministry of defense as their as their employer. And these sorts of targeting allows you to oversample the number of soldiers for instance that are going to see the advertisement or the number of ex conscripts that have now become civilians but have military experience that are going to see the advertisement. And so what I did in both Egypt and Tunisia was this Facebook ad route as well to try to survey both countries, militaries or ex soldiers. And that's what I was able to do and I put these three surveys then into the final chapter of the book while the bulk of the book of course still relies on the qualitative interviews and the evidence that I find on the ground in Egypt and Tunisia. One one thing which was really interesting I thought was you got your hands on kind of the register of the biographies of the members of the retired Tunisian that right this was like the retired Tunisian officers roster right. Exactly everyone would really say work with that. Yeah, and that was actually a critical piece of the puzzle where the head of the retired officers association let me view this register of everyone who was retired all the senior officers who had retired by 2009. And that allowed me to look at where are these officers coming from and it allowed me to put this piece together that although most officers come from the interior regions especially at the lower ranks. But Giba and Ben Ali because they came from the coast and trusted the elite families coming from the coast. And then they were meddled in promotions at the very top to make sure that the top generals tended to come from Tunis and the Sahel the coastal regions the well off coastal regions that they trusted more believed would be more loyal to them. Then the officers coming from the more neglected internal regions of the country. And then this discrimination and promotions that I found in that in that data set of retired officers. I also then started to hear in my interviews as well that there was this resentment towards the coastal officers Rashid Ahmad among others that had been perhaps put there not so much based on merit according to these lower officers and instead based on his coastal affiliation. Was an additional part of the puzzle I think of why the Tunisian military behaved the way it did it was an additional way that they resented Ben Ali not just for marginalizing the military materially and politically but also this regional discrimination that they also faced within the military. We're going to take a short break and then we'll be back to talk about the cases of Egypt and Tunisia. We're back to the Middle East political science podcast we're speaking with Sharon Gruehl about his book soldiers of democracy and now let's talk about your cases. You have Egypt you have Tunisia to the you know the premier cases of the Arab Spring transitions. Why don't we start with Egypt since that's what you do in your book and kind of walk us through what did we learn about the evolution of the military Egypt and the role that it played in. We start with the revolution and then we can go to the code. Absolutely so what we had in Egypt was a military and an officer core in particular that had been powerful in the sense of material and political power that had been politicized to believe that that's the role it deserves to play in governance and that in terms of its composition had been stacked with relatively secular elite families. You know the top class in Egypt and the supporters of the dictators historically and so that military, powerful politicized stacked with the elite, made democratization more difficult. When the Arab Spring erupted, when the protests emerged, the military was wary of democratization. It's not the case that they had resented Mubarak and were eager to abandon him. They tried even to repress the revolution. Even after their pledge, publicly that we're not going to use force against protesters, they actually did. If you look at the human rights watch reports, they were arresting, they were detaining, they were torturing even killing protesters throughout the 18 days, even after the pledge not to use force. And they were trying in that sense to save Mubarak and the regime as best they could. But what's important was that they couldn't do more than that. They couldn't massacre the protesters in 2011 in a way that they could later on in 2013. They couldn't because at that stage, the protests were cross cutting, Islamist and secularist. Everyone was out in the streets. And that made repression in terms of large scale high level repression. Very difficult. The soldiers that the officer corps would need to rely on to actually repress are conscripts. They are everyday ordinary Egyptians in the way that the officers are not. They as ordinary conscripts, likely identify with demands of the people, likely at brothers and sisters protesting. And those brothers and sisters were also very smart to fraternize with the soldiers whenever they saw them hugging and cheering them, chanting that the army and the people are one hand. That made repression far more difficult. And added to that, you had US pressure on the Egyptian military not to fire on the protesters. That might lead to a suspension of aid at the time, very consistent and strong US pressure on them. And so that constrained what the Egyptian military could do. Although it didn't want democratization and it tried to repress in terms of out of the light low level repression, it couldn't engage in a massacre of the protesters. And so eventually it had to jettison moobodak in order to try to save its position in the regime. It had to get rid of moobodak and instead try to govern the transition itself. And so not only does it abandon moobodak, but it ceases power in the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces directly running the transition moving forward. Then we take a step back just a kind of pre revolution because you talk quite a bit in the book in one of the chapters about the way about the increasing militarization or the interconnection of the military and mobarics and D.P. over like the last decade of mobarics rain, and then you also take on some of the ideas that people have about command mobaric and the way that he did or didn't threaten the interests of the military walk us through that a little bit. I think it's an important part of your arguments about kind of the incentives of the military in this in this time period. So I argue that Egypt's military continued to play this empowered role throughout the gammala, the master and horse at and host me mobaric that it wasn't the case that host me mobaric switched the strategy to instead neglecting them to try to to civilianize the government or to try to build up the police that I argue that those indicators that you're seeing the civilianization of the ministers or the building up of the police is actually in service of the military what the military wanted at the time that after the defeat in 1967 it became very difficult for the military to have that upfront rule in governance. It was getting blamed for being involved in politics for monopolizing wealth and not even being able to perform well in 67 and that led to considerable public pressure on the military to instead withdraw from the limelight in order to preserve its reputation and in turn preserve its interest. I argue that it was actually a voluntary willing strategy of the military to try to move away from the direct Praetorian governance and instead to more of a indirect role in governance. I think some of the key points or evidence there is that even though they were behind the scenes ruling but not governing as Stephen Cook puts it in the 2000s you could see that they were still be dominant veto player when you saw these more civilian ministers try to start to privatize for instance the economy which could have threatened the military's businesses to the military is able to carve out its companies to avoid privatization. It had veto power even over economic policy not just security policy and likewise when we think about a robotic building up the police and the central security forces in particular that I argue was also part of what the military wanted they had engaged in repression in the weeks after the defeat in 1967 when they were protest and the military had engaged in repression at that time because there wasn't a militarized police force that could have done it. That hurt their reputation even further and so the build up that you see of the central security forces was in the military's interest it was a way of them to keep their hands clean of repression so that they can have a good image domestically as well as internationally to maintain US military aid. So I didn't find persuasive the arguments that actually the military had been neglected and undermobodak just has it had been neglected under Ben Ali and that's why both of these militaries defected in the revolution. By contrast you see very different behavior of these militaries in the revolution Egypt is very hesitant reluctant to abandon mubarak tries to engage in repression throughout the protests and only begrudgingly has to accept his ouster due to those constraints that I had outlined earlier. Great so then okay so you already talked about the revolution itself and kind of the choices they made and why they finally got rid of mubarak so now we're in the period where they're governing as the scaff and no talk us through the transition the coup and kind of what happens to the Egyptian military. So this empowered military made the transition far more difficult by necessity democratization was going to encroach on their privileges you would have a civilian president you would have civilians empowered as decision makers rather than keeping a veto power for the military whether they were Muslim brotherhood or not. Exactly the most making it because it was the Muslim brotherhood it added some additional elements in terms of Islamists in power versus this more secular military but in terms of their corporate interests those were going to be encroached upon no matter who became the the president. And so you see the military play this active role to prevent encroachments onto their turf that they not only govern the transition from the start they then try to divide and rule the parties so that they're not able to form a united front against the military then you see them in essence neuter the parliament and the president even before they take office they say that the anything the parliament passes is going to have to be approved by the scaff anyway they have a veto over any law they pass. You see them try to strip the president of his role as commander in chief that any security decision has to get approved by the scaff and so in essence trying to carve out the scaff's privileges even prior to any elected official taking office. And so when more see the elected president finally takes office he has this difficult negotiation to do with the military over what privileges they're going to preserve under democracy. And what I think observers get wrong about Egypt is to think that more see gave the military everything it wanted there was this widespread perception among Egyptians especially among the secular opposition but also among academics that more see gave the military everything he gave them all the ministers that they wanted the governors that they wanted everything that they wanted in the constitution but what I find in the book is that actually not quite he respected those interests but he also encroached upon a number of others he was trying in some sense to form a pact a pact to transition like we see in Latin we saw in Latin America in terms of reducing some of the military's interest even while you try to respect others and so in the constitution for instance more see put himself as the supreme commander of the armed forces able to make security decisions even in the national defense council military members are no longer a majority like they were in the supplementary declaration that the military put forth prior to more see selection that they're monopoly therefore their veto power over security power was reduced in the constitution. And then more see starts to make security decisions as well that the military is upset with encouraging Egyptians to go fight in Syria threatening Ethiopia with war over the dam they're building on the Nile and by contrast was too lenient in regards to other security threats trying to call off military operations against militants in the Sinai trying to be more lenient towards Hamas than the military wanted at the time. And so those frictions with the military over security policy only confirmed to the military that we've lost our monopoly or veto power over security policy and this is unacceptable we can't allow these ignorance civilians to be running security affairs. The second stacking of Tantawi and Samyan then plays a kind of a key role in this it seems exactly and so this was more sees attempt to try to exert civilian control in it on that same day that he sacked Tantawi and an an he also canceled their supplementary declaration that had stripped him of being commander in chief and so it's part of this attempt to actually gain some prerogatives back from the military and into the civilian hands it's not the case in that sense that more see gave the military everything it wanted also in economic contracts more see gave them many contracts but not the big one the Suez Canal corridor development project that the military wanted to run on its own as it therefore later did post coup but more see tried to delegate them into one among many partners on that project. And then you had the friction over the brotherhoods islamism and this more secular military that had come becoming had been coming from the secular elite there more see tried to open the ranks of the military tried to make them more inclusive and allow more sees nephew for instance to join the military academy to allow islamis into the officer core for the first time and you can imagine the reaction we will not allow information this brotherhoodization. And so you had these series of frictions actually with the military which I argue is normal when you have an empowered military it's by necessity going to encroach upon their political power it's going to encroach on their composition if they've been stacked with only one faction of society that this is normal for democratization to encroach upon their interests. But while it is normal what is also normal are miscalculations during a fast pace transition when you're trying to fix the economy right the constitution and now also have to deal with this negotiation with the military miscalculations are inevitable and what more see in the most some brotherhood thought was that they had the public support and the international support to get away with these encroachments. And so you can see that with these encroachments on the military that even if they were agreeing the military the military wouldn't be able to stage a coup because more see still had the majority of the population and critically us support or so he thought both of those ended up being miscalculations more see didn't realize the extent to which the military and the deep state help to fund and coordinate that the mud had protest he didn't expect there for June 30 to be that big. And in terms of the international component more see thought that the US was giving a consistent red light to the military stage a coup but in reality as David Kirkpatrick's book has as shown us says that although president Obama and ambassador Patterson were giving a clear red light others in the administration without more see knowing we're giving CC more of a yellow light that this is your country you have to do with it as you see fit. And so more see didn't understand that actually he had lost public support and the international support to be able to get away with those encroachments and so ultimately he pushed the military farther than the conditions allowed and led to the coup in 2013 for such a conspiratorially minded movement they sure didn't spot the setup. But precisely and so we we keep talking about Egypt all day as people said Egypt tend to do but I want to make sure we leave enough time to talk about Tunisia because your analysis there's really interesting and I think really captures that kind of the path dependent nature of these militaries in some really kind of fascinating ways. Can you talk a little bit about the military that were given made and how that ended up manifesting in in 2011. So what give a strategy upon independence was to marginalize the military immediately in part because he didn't there wasn't a war of independence there wasn't a military officer core to inherit from the French era he had a relatively blank slate to design the new military. And he decides to marginalize the military and instead build up a national guard which he puts in the ministry of interior to counterbalance the military and from then on you see this kind of path dependence to the marginalization the military is far from politics far from material wealth low salaries and that starts to shape also so their professionalism and their composition. Because they're kept far from politics they develop more than a political professionalism over time coming to view that as normal for the Tunisian military likewise it shapes their composition they no longer can come from the elite families in the coast increasingly over time the elite doesn't find the low salaries and lack of political power attractive and so the officer core comes to be composed instead of ordinary Tunisians that are a bit more supportive of the revolution and share the same group of people. And so you got a great quote in there from one of your interviews of someone saying if you wanted to go into politics the military is in how you would do it. Exactly maybe in Egypt you would join you would do that you'll become a minister but in Tunisia yeah you would go to law or business administration that's the route to power and wealth in the country. So in terms of recruitment as well you avoided the more politicized power seeking individuals and you instead instead have more professional oriented types so there's both that socialization dynamic as well as this recruitment dynamic that led to the more a political professionals to emerge in Tunisia. And that remained path dependent even when Ben Ali came to power Ben Ali was from the military originally and in his first couple of years did seem to try to shift the strategy he appointed some of his colleagues in the military as ministers he gave the military a bigger role in the national security council and in some political decisions. But pretty quickly you saw how vested interests made the marginalization path dependent that is the police and the ruling party were upset that the military was now taking some of the ministerial positions away from them and so in the early 1990s the these actors the police party. They tried to make Ben Ali paranoid of the military they even make up a coup plot in the military this but a cut the Sahel affair where they accused the military of fomenting a coup alongside anata that that is the only thing that we should go back to marginalizing the military I'm still paranoid of them and maybe they would stay to coup against me and so you see these path dependence in the strategy such that by 2011 when the revolution hit you have this military that's been marginalized politically and materially and is relatively a political and far from politics and is composed of for the most part ordinary Tunisians from the interior regions even if at the very top ranks they made sure to appoint officers from the coast to the top generals. Now in your story about 2000 2010 2011 you have a you you get this kind of a stance of saying every whatever he believes is wrong and here's what really happened so tell us what do people get wrong and why do you think the wrong. So this is probably the most surprising part of my research I didn't because I had believed the myth that everyone to this day believes which is that Ben Ali after weeks of protests asked the military to fire on the protests and the head of the army general Rashid al-Mas said no I refuse to fire and that's why Ben Ali fled the country. But it actually pretty quickly emerged that this was just a myth in the months after the revolution there was a military trial of Ali Sadiyat the for allegedly conspiring against the president and in that trial you had almost 40 regime officials testify as to what actually happened in the revolution and some very smart Tunisian journalists decided to compile all those testimonies to peace together what actually. And so they are book by Abdulaziz Belkhojja and thought a shaykhruh who was one of the first to actually reveal what actually happened which is that in Rashid al-Mas testimony to the military court he actually says this is a false rumor I was never asked to fire on protesters and thus I never refused to fire on protesters and then when you try to go back to see where did this rumor emerge. You find some articles from January 12th January 11th prior to the revolutions succeeding in French in Arabic only not yet in English that show that according to opposition sources Rashid al-Mas refused to fire and was there for fire and replaced by Ahmed Shabiyud and we couldn't get official confirmation of this. And so despite those qualifications that it's only from opposition forces there's no confirmation it becomes fact upon after the revolution everybody believes Rashid al-Mas was the man who said no as the hero of the revolution etc. And the military is that we're interested people believing that at that point. Precisely it's good for Rashid al-Mas to keep that narrative flowing even if when he's at the military court and has to testify under oath he says actually this was the false rumor I was ever asked to fire. And a few months later in summer of 2011 a blogger comes out and says this was actually a disinformation campaign that I put forth. And I see an IOT this who later become a member of parliament but a cyber activist during the revolution says that I invented this rumor and it's hard to know if it was him or any other number of these cyber activists who were working at the time. And what's clear was that this never actually happened that it was a rumor according to the spread from opposition service and then was put in the media France 24 June a freaking others published this during the revolution during the protest that Rashid al-Mas had said no. And what I find in the book is that although it never happened it actually had real world consequences nonetheless the rumor because it got publicized and because everybody believed it it seemed credible that the military would say no given what we know about the military that they weren't letting it fire in a few. And exactly and that they're seeing that even though the military deployed even though Rashid al-Mas said yes to every order he got and deployed the military to defend institutions he was never asked to fire on protesters but he was asked to defend institutions including notably to defend police stations and RCD party offices. Ali Saddiath, the head of the presidential guard told me that those were part of the institutions that the military was asked to protect and that Rashid al-Mas said yes to the soldiers that were actually on the ground didn't really defend those institutions they let the protesters destroy the police stations and the RCD party offices rather than use force to defend them because the soldiers are ordinary Tunisians because the military had been neglected. And so even though Rashid al-Mas said no you did see these defections among the lower levels and that led further credence to this rumor that actually Rashid al-Mas said no. And so because everyone believed it it led them to be emboldened to protest thinking the military is on our side in those final days. And what I find is that it also led to cracks and defections within the police that they started to believe the rumor too. So Samir Tharhooni the one who mutinyed on the final day and arrested the trebelcees at the airport he told me that actually the lower ranks of the police started to believe the rumor too. And they were giving up in the final days thinking that the military is not going to back them up. And so he decides given all of this given the kind of chaos and disillusionment happening within the regime he decides on that final day to mutiny in the hopes of preserving the police moving forward if we arrest the trebelcees and show that we're on the side of the people maybe we will at least survive the revolution even if of course the trebelcees would not. And so that's the real of the revolution. And then so in a thing a step back from the details then you argue that the military didn't defect it was what you call it was sure came. Yeah the high levels of the military Rashid al-Mas these officers who were chosen based on their loyalty coming from these elite coastal families they obeyed every order they were given to deploy the military to defend even police stations and RCD offices. But the lower officers and the soldiers who are actually stationed on the ground they don't want to defend the regime they are the ones that feel this discrimination in promotions that they're coming from the interior regions but can never become general they are the ones feeling the neglect and marginalization. And they are the ones the ordinary Tunisians that are sympathizing with the demands of the protesters and so the actual lower levels stationed on the ground start to shirk not actually fulfill this duty of protecting the police stations and RCD offices even though at the high level Rashid al-Mas never actually said no but because of these legacies of having marginalized the military of having ordinary Tunisians stack the military or compose the military you had. Therefore a military that was unwilling to actually use force to defend bin Ali. The last question then just to finish out this story then how does your theory help explain why the military went along with Kai Saeed's Otto Gote. It stems from the same marginalization. You had this military that had been neglected that had become relatively a political and that was composed of relatively ordinary Tunisians that helped during the transition they didn't stage a coup in 2013 despite all the calls for them to stage a coup because they were gaining from the transition having been so neglected under bin Ali now things were starting to improve for them. They were relatively a political didn't view a coup as their appropriate role and they were ordinary Tunisians that had identified with the revolution and so they ignored the calls for a coup in 2013. But paradoxically they then abandoned democracy in 2021 when the civilian commander in chief the president asked them to close the parliament and I argue it's the same free factors that led them to do that. Their corporate interests first of all had been so neglected under dictatorship now things were starting to improve and they were improving even further under Kai Saeed. Kai Saeed appoints the first military doctors as minister of health first ministerial positions in 30 years tasks the military with leading the response to COVID improving the military's image among the population. Also promotes all of the top generals to the equivalent of a two star general which was unprecedented in Tunisia to have all five top generals to stars prior to the takeover so things were going well for the Tunisian military under Kai Saeed so corporate interest was one reason they obeyed. But the second was this a political professionalism that they had developed under dictatorship and that led them not to stage a coup themselves in 2013 led them actually to obey the orders in 2021 this idea that he should obey civilian control we should defer to the civilian commander in chief. We as military officers don't feel qualified to say that he this order is unconstitutional he after all is the constitutional law professor who are we to say it's wrong and so they decided out of this culture of deferring to the president to say okay will obey these orders and following orders is the less political thing to do if we're trying to be a political professionals we should just follow the orders. So professionalism paradoxically led them also to obey in 2021 and then the final explanation is about their composition that they're coming from ordinary Tunisians from the relatively neglected interior regions. So ordinary Tunisians that had come to embrace the populist rhetoric of the president that viewed the elite as the problem these ordinary Tunisians who viewed the elite and the parties and the businessmen is corrupt they had bought into Kai Saeed's rhetoric of we need to clean up the system. Likewise their composition coming from these same families led them just like the majority of Tunisians to say this is the right path for the country and so all of those factors then their professionalism their composition their corporate interests led them to obey in 2021 and and democracy even if those same factors had led them to support democracy initially and avoid staging a coup in 2013. As fascinating hey thank you so much we've been speaking with us Ron Grohl about his book soldiers of democracy Oxford University press thanks for listening to the Middle East political science podcast.