https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3487-397X
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ABSTRACT
What is the impact of international peacekeeping missions for civil-military relations at home? This article unpacks the conditions that produce positive effects of peacekeeping participation on the domestic politics of an authoritarian regime. Drawing on field research, I discuss four mechanisms that link foreign policy making to domestic civil-military relations in Ben Ali’s Tunisia. First, the deployment of troops for peacekeeping abroad presents obstacles for the coordination of coup plots at home. Second, incumbents can allocate material resources to meet officers’ economic grievances. Moreover, peacekeeping operations serve to enhance corporate institutionalization through specific training programmes. Finally, peacekeeping contributes to a professional ethos and hence the depoliticization of the officer corps. These findings give rise to the notion that contributing to peace can have similar effects for domestic politics as going to war.
Acknowledgements
Previous versions of this article have been presented at the 2018 convention of the American Political Science Association (APSA), 29 August – 2 September, Boston, Massachusetts, and at the 2019 convention of the Middle East Studies Association, 14–17 November, New Orleans, Louisiana. I am grateful for insightful comments by Eva Bellin, Risa Brooks, Sharan Grewal, Kristen Harkness, Drew Kinney, Kevin Koehler, as well as two anonymous reviewers and Nina Wilén of International Peacekeeping.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
About the Author
Holger Albrecht is an Associate Professor of political science at the University of Alabama. He is the author of Raging against the Machine: Political Opposition under Authoritarianism in Egypt and the co‐editor of Armies and Insurgencies in the Arab Spring. He has published articles on the politics of civil‐military relations in Perspectives on Politics, International Studies Quarterly, Comparative Politics, Security Studies, Armed Forces & Society, and Political Science Quarterly.
Notes
1 Raes, Du Bois, and Buts, “Supplying UN Peacekeepers”; Rogers and Kennedy, “Dying for Peace?”
2 Stojek and Tir, “The Supply Side.”
3 Lebovic, “Passing the Burden”; Victor, “African Peacekeeping in Africa.”
4 Bove and Elia, “Supplying Peace”; Kathman, “United Nations Peacekeeping Personnel Commitments”; Gaibulloev et al., “Personnel Contributions”; Brosig, “Rentier Peacekeeping”; Sandler, “International Peacekeeping Operations.”
5 See, for instance, Adhikari, “Breaking the Balance?”; Beswick, “Peacekeeping, Regime Security”; Wilen and Heineken, “Peacekeeping Deployment”; Bellamy and Williams, Providing Peacekeepers.
6 Schiel, Powell, and Daxecker, “Peacekeeping Deployments”; Lundgren, “Backdoor Peacekeeping”; Kathman and Mellin, “Who Keeps the Peace?”; Bove and Elia, “Supplying Peace.”
7 Worboys, “The Traumatic Journey”; Solar, “Civil-Military Relations and Human Security.”
8 Jowell, “Unintended Consequences.”
9 Dwyer, “Peacekeeping Abroad”; Dwyer, Soldiers in Revolt; Heinecken and Wilen, “No Place Like Home?”
10 Cunliffe, “From Peacekeepers to Praetorians”; Sotomayor, The Myth of the Democratic Peacekeeper; Harig, “Re-importing the ‘Robust Turn’”; Wilen, Birantamije, and Ambrosetti. “The Burundian Army’s Trajectory.”
11 Lundgren, “Backdoor Peacekeeping”; Kathman and Mellin, “Who Keeps the Peace?”
12 I conducted a total of about twenty interviews most of which were semi-structured, open-ended conversations with retired Tunisian officers along with a number of journalists and political observers. I also conducted a small number of structured, anonymized interviews with retired officers. My research was facilitated by the Tunisian Retired Officers Association.
13 Miller, “Domestic Structures”; DeRouen, “Presidents and the Diversionary Use of Force.”
14 Talmadge, “Different Threats, Different Militaries”; Pickering and Kisangani, “Diversionary Despots.”
15 Quinlivan, “Coup-proofing”; De Bruin, “Preventing Coups d’etat”; Albrecht and Eibl, “How to Keep Officers in the Barracks”; Harkness, When Soldiers Rebel.
16 Piplani and Talmadge, “When War Helps Civil-Military Relations”; Powell, “Regime Vulnerability.”
17 Arbatli and Arbatli, “External Threats.”
18 Miller and Elgün, “Diversion and Political Survival.”
19 Debs and Goemans, “Regime Type.”
20 To the best of my knowledge, the term was first introduced by Cunliffe, “From Peacekeepers to Praetorians.”
21 Kathman, “United Nations Peacekeeping Personnel Commitments”; Gaibulloev et al., “Personnel Contributions.”
22 Bove and Elia, “Supplying Peace”; Victor, “African Peacekeeping in Africa.”
23 Brosig, “Rentier Peacekeeping”; Sandler, “International Peacekeeping Operations.”
24 Worboys, “The Traumatic Journey”; Solar, “Civil-military Relations and Human Security”; Sotomayor, The Myth of the Democratic Peacekeeper.
25 Lundgren, “Backdoor Peacekeeping”; Kathman and Mellin, “Who Keeps the Peace?”
26 Albrecht and Eibl, “How to Keep Officers in the Barracks”; Singh, Seizing Power.
27 Findlay, “The New Peacekeepers.”
28 Conrad, Kim, and Souva, “Narrow Interests”; Leon, “Loyalty for Sale?”
29 Lundgren, “Backdoor Peacekeeping”; Kathman and Mellin, “Who Keeps the Peace?”
30 Dwyer, “Peacekeeping Abroad.”
31 Albrecht, “Military Insubordination”; Singh, Seizing Power.
32 Wilen and Heinecken, “Peacekeeping Deployment Abroad.”
33 Ruby and Gibler, “US Professional Military Education.”
34 Loveman, For la Patria, 267.
35 Jebnoun, “In the Shadow of Power,” 298.
36 Bou Nassif, “A Military Besieged”; Brooks, “Abandoned at the Palace.”
37 Feaver, “Civil-Military Problematique”; Kamrava, “Military Professionalization.”
38 Albrecht, “The Myth of Coup-proofing.”
39 Koehler, “Officers and Regimes.”
40 For more information about these episodes of military intervention in politics, see Ware, “Ben Ali’s Constitutional Coup”; Vandewalle, “From the New State to the New Era,” 607; Willis, Politics and Power in the Maghreb, 87; Pachon, “Loyalty and Defection,” 7–10; Grewal, A Quiet Revolution, 2–5; Haddad, “Strengthening the Tunisian Armed Forces?” 217.
41 For the Gafsa uprising in 1980, see Vandewalle, “From the New State to the New Era.” For the recent episode in Tataouine, see Grewal, “Military Defection.” The political interventions of the army in the 1970s and 1980s raised major concerns within the armed forces about their engagement against fellow citizens, but also among policy makers about the army’s relatively poor performance. While ultimately successful in suppressing the respective uprisings, success came at the expense of excessive use of force.
42 Bellin, Stalled Democracy.
43 Ben Ali was a career military officer. He enjoyed substantial training in the US and France and, after 1984, embarked on a fast-track political career as director of national security, minister of interior, and prime minister; see Ware, “Ben Ali’s Constitutional Coup,” 607; Willis, Politics and Power, 96.
44 Grewal, “Tunisia’s Foiled Coup,” 3.
45 The Tunisian constitution is accessible at www.jurisitetunisie.com/tunisie/codes/constitution/const1020.htm.
46 Bou Nassif, “A Military Besieged,” 80. At the same time, the military’s recent deployment in domestic policing is noteworthy all the more so for the establishment, by Ben Ali, of the Tunisian National Guard, a 12,000-men strong paramilitary force tasked with border protection, anti-terrorist operations, and deployment against domestic protests; see Brooks, “Subjecting the Military to the Rule of Law,” 117.
47 Ibid.
48 Ware, “Ben Ali’s Constitutional Coup”; Willis, Politics and Power, 103–5; Grewal, A Quiet Revolution, 3–5.
49 Bou Nassif, “A Military Besieged,” 68.
50 Note the departure from this practice since Ben Ali’s ouster from power. Since 2011 all of the individuals who served a ministers of defense have been civilians, with professional backgrounds in academia or law.
51 Grewal, A Quiet Revolution, 3.
52 Ware, “Ben Ali’s Constitutional Coup,” 594.
53 Bou Nassif, “A Military Besieged”; Kourda, Le ‘Complot’ Barrakat Essahel.
54 Ibid; author interview with retired officer serving with the Tunisian military intelligence, Tunis, 3 March 2020.
55 Grewal, “Tunisia’s Foiled Coup.”
56 Author interview with retired officer in the Tunisian army, Tunis, 23 May 2017.
57 Bou Nassif, “A Military Besieged,” 75.
58 Holmes and Koehler, “Myths of Military Defection.”
59 Taylor, Military Responses, 72.
60 Brooks, “Subjecting the Military,” 109.
61 Bove and Rivera, “Elite Co-optation”; Koga Sudduth, “Coup Risk.”
62 Source: Republic of Tunisia, Ministry of Defense, www.defense.tn/index.php/en/missions-de-l-onu (accessed 4 February 2019).
63 Author interview with retired officer in the Tunisian army, Tunis, 15 May 2017.
64 Author interview with retired officer in the Tunisian army, Tunis, 18 May 2017. For the security threat in the southern border region with Libya, see Boukhars, “The Potential Jihadi Windfall.”
65 Bellamy and Williams, Providing Peacekeepers, 43; Kathman, “United Nations Peacekeeping Personnel Commitments”; Sandler, “International Peacekeeping Operations,” 1880.
66 Bellamy and Williams, Providing Peacekeepers.
67 Victor, “African Peacekeeping in Africa”; Le Gouriellec, “Des armées africaines.”
68 Bove and Elia, “Supplying Peace.”
69 See “Tunisia – Army” at https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/tunisia/army.htm (accessed 24 June 2019). In five structured, anonymous interviews with the author (March 2020), Tunisian officers serving in the early UN missions in Congo in the 1960s and in Cambodia 1992/1993 overwhelmingly reported a “bad” or “fair” quality of preparation for those missions.
70 Author interview with retired officers in the Tunisian army, Tunis, 15 and 18 May 2017.
71 Author interview with retired officer in the Tunisian army, Tunis, 23 May 2017; see also Taylor, Military Responses, 57–82.
72 Author interview with retired officer in the Tunisian army and with retired military intelligence officer, Tunis 3 March 2020.
73 Ibid.
74 Haddad, “Strengthening the Tunisian Armed Forces,” 2014.
75 Officers from the navy and the air force would occasionally be recruited for observer missions; author interview with retired officer in the Tunisian navy, Tunis, 1 March 2020.
76 Author interview with retired officer in the Tunisian army and with retired military intelligence officer, Tunis 3 March 2020.
77 Author interview with retired officer in the Tunisian army, Tunis, 18 May 2017.
78 Non-commissioned officers serve until the age of 55, while voluntary soldiers retire at the age of 50.
79 Author interview with retired officer in the Tunisian army, Tunis, 15 May 2017.
80 Author interview with retired officer in the Tunisian army, Tunis, 18 May 2017.
81 Albrecht and Eibl, “How to Keep Officers in the Barracks,” 317.
82 Author interview, Tunis, 19 May 2017.
83 Author interviews with retired officers in the Tunisian army, Tunis, 15 and 18 May 2017.
84 Author interview with retired officer in the Tunisian army, Tunis, 15 May 2017; see also https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/tunisia/army.htm (accessed 24 June 2019).
85 In 2015, a second centre opened that was specifically designed to provide training for high-ranking officers: the Centre Tunisien de Formation Militaire d’Excellence (see https://africanmanager.com/tunisie-larmee-tunisienne-developpe-sa-formation-militaire-dexcellence-avec-les-usa/ accessed 24 June 2018).
86 Author interview with retired officer in the Tunisian army, Tunis, 18 May 2017.
87 See http://www.emat.defense.tn/index.php/en/officer-training/conditions-admission-am (accessed 24 June 2019). Educational requirements in engineering and law are a holdover from the Bourguiba era, when the Tunisian military was heavily involved in the country’s socio-economic development.
88 Author interview with Tunisian researcher, Tunis, 19 May 2017.
89 Meddeb, “Conscription Reform.”
90 Until 2010, the military offered new recruits an option of “individual underconscription” (arab.: al-ta iͨnāt al-fardiyah). This would require them to undergo three weeks of elementary training after which they could buy themselves out by allocating 30 percent of their individual salaries to the military for the duration of one year. Another way to avoid the draft was to enrol in higher education. Author interview with retired officer in the Tunisian army, Tunis, 23 May 2017.
91 Ibid.
92 Armée Tunisienne, Invincible Tunisie.
93 See https://directinfo.webmanagercenter.com/2017/06/30/lettre-ouverte-a-monsieur-youssef-chahed-chef-du-gouvernement/ (accessed 24 June 2019).
94 Skik died in a helicopter crash on 30 April 2002, just five months after his promotion.
95 Author interviews with retired officer in the Tunisian army, Tunis, 15 May 2017, and with retired navy officer, Tunis, 1 March 2020; see also Armée Tunisienne, Invincible Tunisie, 82–5.
96 Author interview with Tunisian journalist, Tunis, 17 May 2017.