Book contents
- Military Politics of the Contemporary Arab World
- Military Politics of the Contemporary Arab World
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Surge of Armies in Arab States
- 2 Changing Dynamics with the Rise of New Kinds of Authoritarian Regimes
- 3 Armies Living under Enduring Authoritarian Regimes
- 4 Are Arab Monarchical Militaries Different?
- 5 Agency Restored?
- 6 Post-uprising Eras and (Tentative) Regime Re-formations
- Conclusion
- Index
4 - Are Arab Monarchical Militaries Different?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 October 2020
- Military Politics of the Contemporary Arab World
- Military Politics of the Contemporary Arab World
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Surge of Armies in Arab States
- 2 Changing Dynamics with the Rise of New Kinds of Authoritarian Regimes
- 3 Armies Living under Enduring Authoritarian Regimes
- 4 Are Arab Monarchical Militaries Different?
- 5 Agency Restored?
- 6 Post-uprising Eras and (Tentative) Regime Re-formations
- Conclusion
- Index
Summary
Chapter 4 deals with monarchical armies, as these allegedly specific cases are usually less addressed in studies about Arab militaries. Italso delves into differences within the monarchies, with Jordan, Morocco and Oman closer to the model of professional/institutionalized Arab armies (with these terms strongly qualified), in contrast to the specific militaries of the Gulf oil states, characterized with overspending in some dimensions (infrastructure and equipment), the maintenance of an understaffed (yet well-paid and “cocooned”) army and the overreliance on the American (or Western) security alliance. It shows that monarchies are not so alien to the military, though they maintain a specific composition. Whatever the differences (and violent encounters) with republics in their trajectory of political development in the two post-independence decades, both types of regimes, monarchies as well as republics, converged in similar authoritarian control after the 1970s. And this chapter also explores a new sense of military assertiveness after 2011 in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
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- Military Politics of the Contemporary Arab World , pp. 158 - 184Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020