This book explains Arab military responses to the social uprisings which began in 2011. Through a comparative case study analysis of Egyptian, Tunisian, Libyan, and Syrian militaries, it explains why militaries fractured, supported the regime in power, or removed their presidents.

This volume examines Lebanon’s post-2011 security dilemmas and the tenuous civil-military relations. The Syrian civil war has strained the Lebanese Armed Forces’ (LAF) cohesion and threatens its neutrality – its most valued assets in a divided society. The spill-over from the Syrian civil war and Hezbollah’s military engagement has magnified the security challenges facing the Army, making it a target. Massive foreign grants have sought to strengthen its military capability, stabilize the country and contain the Syria crisis. However, as this volume demonstrates, the real weakness of the LAF is not its lack of sophisticated armoury, but the fragile civil–military relations that compromise its fighting power, cripple its neutrality and expose it to accusations of partisanship and political bias. This testifies to both the importance of and the challenges facing multi-confessional armies in deeply divided countries.

In Civil-Military Relations in Israel, Yehuda Ben Meir examines the reasons preventing Israel from becoming a "garrison state". A former deputy minister for foreign affairs and longtime member and analyst of the Israeli political scene, Ben Meir is uniquely qualified to give a behind-the-scenes picture of the intimate relationship between Israel's civilian and military leaders. Civil-Military Relations in Israel examines the changing face of the military over the years from an idealistic defense force to a professional army. Ben Meir also views the great divisiveness in Israeli politics as a threat to the unified strength of purpose that in the past characterized the nation's civil authority, and he examines present and future threats to continued civilian control of the military. The book also delves into the legal and constitutional foundations of Israel's civil-military relations, providing a valuable perspective on the organization and role of the current defense establishment, as well as the informal relationship between the key players in the system. In addition, Ben Meir pinpoints the areas in which the military is involved in key political decision making. Despite continuing efforts to resolve the pattern of violence and conflict in the Middle East, the long-standing hostility between Arab and Jew in the region is unlikely to disappear in the near future. And as long as such animosity lingers, Israel's military will remain a strong force in Israeli politics.

The deep state ranks among the most critical issues in Turkish politics. This book traces its origins and offers an explanation of the emergence and trajectory of the deep state; the meaning and function of informal and authoritarian institutions in the formal security sector of a democratic regime; the involvement of the state in organized crime; armed conflict; corruption; and massive human rights violations. This book applies an innovative methodological approach to concept formation and offers a mid-range theory of deep state that sheds light on the reciprocal relationship between the state and political regimes and elaborates on the conditions for the consolidation of democracy. It traces the path-dependent emergence and trajectory of the deep state from the Ottoman Empire to the current Turkish Republic and its impact on state-society relations. It reads state formation, consolidation, and breakdown from the perspective of this most resilient phenomenon of Turkish politics. The analysis also situates recent developments regarding AKP governments, including the EU accession process, civil-military relations, coup trials, the Kurdish question, and the Gülen Movement in their context within the deep state. Moreover, this case-study offers an analytical framework for cross-regional comparative analysis of the deep states. Addressing the lacuna in academic scholarship on the deep state phenomenon in Turkey, this book is essential reading for students and scholars with an interest in democratization, politics and Middle East Studies.

Civil-Military Relations in the Modern Middle East explores the political and economic interactions between civilians and the armed forces in the post-World War II Middle East, emphasizing four themes: military and society, the role of the military in political transitions, the military’s part in national economies, and the relations between soldiers and civilians in wartime. Covering the greater Middle East—including the Arab States, Israel, Turkey, and Iran—the book establishes how militaries in many Middle Eastern countries influence the national political and economic systems and how, in turn, politics influences the national militaries.

"The interaction between military and civilian courts, the political power that legal prerogatives can provide to the armed forces, and the difficult process civilian politicians face in reforming military courts remain glaringly under-examined. This book fills a gap in existing scholarship by providing a theoretically rich, global examination of the operation and reform of military courts in democracies. Drawing on a newly-created global dataset, it examines trends across states and over time. Combined with deeper qualitative case studies, the book presents clear and well-justified findings that will be of interest to scholars and policymakers working in a variety of fields"--

The Arab Uprisings have brought renewed attention to the role of the military in the MENA region, where they are either the backbone of regime power or a crucial part of patronage networks in political systems. This collection of essays from international experts examines the economic interests of armed actors ranging from military businesses in Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Jordan, Sudan, and Yemen to retired military officers’ economic endeavors and the web of funding of non-state armed groups in Syria and Libya. Due to the combined power of business and arms, the military often manages to incorporate or quell competing groups and thus, to revert achievements of revolutionary movements.