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.

Less than twenty-four months after the hope-filled Arab uprising, the popular movement had morphed into a dystopia of resurgent dictators, failed states, and civil wars. Egypt's epochal transition to democracy ended in a violent military coup. Yemen and Libya collapsed into civil war, while Bahrain erupted in smothering sectarian repression. Syria proved the greatest victim of all, ripped apart by internationally fueled insurgencies and an externally supported, bloody-minded regime. Amidst the chaos, a virulently militant group declared an Islamic State, seizing vast territories and inspiring terrorism across the globe. What happened? The New Arab Wars is a profound illumination of the causes of this nightmare. It details the costs of the poor choices made by regional actors, delivers a scathing analysis of Western misreadings of the conflict, and condemns international interference that has stoked the violence. Informed by commentators and analysts from the Arab world, Marc Lynch's narrative of a vital region's collapse is both wildly dramatic and likely to prove definitive. Most important, he shows that the region's upheavals have only just begun -- and that the hopes of Arab regimes and Western policy makers to retreat to old habits of authoritarian stability are doomed to fail.

This volume examines the trajectory of Pakistan’s democratic transition and the implications of this change for its security. In May 2013, for the first time in its 66-year history, Pakistan saw an elected government complete a full term in office and transfer power through the ballot box to another civilian government. At this important moment in Pakistan’s history, this collection brings together twelve leading academics and writers with an aim to provide a far-reaching analysis of the current situation in Pakistan and emergent trends. Drawing on history, diverse theoretical perspectives, and empirical evidence, three themed sections deal respectively with democratic transition (including Islam and democracy, civil-military relations, and economics), contested borders and contested spaces (the Pashtun belt, Kashmir, and intra-Islamic conflict), and regionalism (bilateral relations from both Pakistani and Indian perspectives, US-Pakistan relations, and nuclear weapons dynamics). Together the contributors explore the status of Pakistan’s democratic transition, contemporary security dynamics, and wider regional security and political dynamics, and the complex interplay of the three, to provide a wide-ranging analysis of Pakistan’s contemporary national and regional challenges, its impact on the region, and evidence of some positive trends for Pakistan’s future. The book will be of much interest to students of South Asian politics, Asian security, governance, and IR in general as well as policy-makers, diplomats, and military professionals.

By examining Libya’s security architecture before and after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervention in 2011, this book aims to answer three questions. First, what were the security patterns in Libya within the Middle East security complex before the Arab Spring? Second, to what extent did the Arab Spring and the revolution and intervention processes in Libya affect this security architecture? And third, what are the implications of the Libyan revolution and the NATO intervention on regional security and on the security sub-complexes of the Middle East in the post-Arab Spring era? The author addresses these issues by providing a micro-level analysis of amity-enmity patterns, power distribution and external power interests.

The advent of the Arab Spring in late 2010 was a hopeful moment for partisans of progressive change throughout the Arab world. Authoritarian leaders who had long stood in the way of meaningful political reform in the countries of the region were either ousted or faced the possibility of political if not physical demise. The downfall of long-standing dictators as they faced off with strong-willed protesters was a clear sign that democratic change was within reach. Throughout the last ten years, however, the Arab world has witnessed authoritarian regimes regaining resilience, pro-democracy movements losing momentum, and struggles between the first and the latter involving regional and international powers. This volume explains how relevant political players in Arab countries among regimes, opposition movements, and external actors have adapted ten years after the onset of the Arab Spring. It includes contributions on Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, and Tunisia. It also features studies on the respective roles of the United States, China, Iran, and Turkey vis-à-vis questions of political change and stability in the Arab region, and includes a study analyzing the role of Saudi Arabia and its allies in subverting revolutionary movements in other countries.

The popular protests in early 2011 were once seen as a turning point in the history of the Arab world, raising hopes for democracy, freedom, and justice in the Middle East. A decade after the uprisings, these hopes are largely dashed in each country swept by popular protests with the exception of Tunisia. Tunisia became the only democracy in the entire region while Egypt saw its first freely elected president and government thrown out by the army in a bloody coup which resulted in a regime that is no less authoritarian than Mubarak’s. This book provides a detailed analysis of the political, economic, and constitutional developments in Tunisia and Egypt. In the light of the existing literature on comparative democratization, the author explores why Egypt’s path to democratization was eroded by several transitional actors while Tunisian political elite managed to move the country towards democracy. The book centers its focus on the role of the political agents in designing the transition and explores the transitional period with respect to the interactions among the political elite and their cost-benefit assumptions, ideological interests, as well as their commitment to democratic processes.

The 2011 Arab Spring is the story of what happens when autocrats prepare their militaries to thwart coups but unexpectedly face massive popular uprisings instead. When demonstrators took to the streets in 2011, some militaries remained loyal to the autocratic regimes, some defected, whilst others splintered. The widespread consequences of this military agency ranged from facilitating transition to democracy, to reconfiguring authoritarianism, or triggering civil war. This study aims to explain the military politics of 2011. Building on interviews with Arab officers, extensive fieldwork and archival research, as well as hundreds of memoirs published by Arab officers, Hicham Bou Nassif shows how divergent combinations of coup-proofing tactics accounted for different patterns of military behaviour in 2011, both in Egypt and Syria, and across Tunisia, and Libya.