Military influence in foreign policy-making: changing dynamics in North African regimes

ABSTRACT

The strong political position armed forces enjoy in authoritarian states and the high priority military elites assign to foreign affairs would lead one to believe that in North Africa – a region made up of authoritarian states with the sole, recent, and partial exception of Tunisia – generals had the political standing to exert a major influence on foreign policy decisions. This would not be a correct assumption because in this region the armed forces’ political influence is actually highly variable. Of the five states analysed in this article (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia) the military is the dominant political institution only in Algeria and Egypt. In the other three countries, the army plays a marginal political role and, by extension, possesses modest foreign policy influence. Moreover, the political clout of these armies is not constant. Since the Arab Spring the political influence of Egyptian generals has considerably increased, that of their Tunisian colleagues has marginally risen, while the status of Libya’s military leaders has diminished.

KEYWORDS:

• Political change
• military
• civil–military relations
• Arab Spring
• foreign policy
• Algeria
• Egypt
• Libya
• Morocco
• Tunisia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In over 35 years, the article was cited 11 times (again, according to Google Scholar).

2 See, for instance, Fawcett 2013; Al-Akim 2011; and Korany and Dessouki 2010.

3 Within a month of becoming Tunisia’s leader, Ben Ali fired 27 of his military academy classmates who presumably knew too much about him and appointed four as ambassadors to remove them from the country. Author’s interviews with senior retired military officers (Tunis, December 2011.)

4 For the interior ministry figures I am grateful to Yezid Sayigh (e-mail communication, 21 February 2014).

5 Interviews with Badra Gaaloul and retired Tunisian senior officers (Tunis, 2-8 December 2011).

6 Author’s interviews (Rabat and Ifrane, Morocco, April 2012).

7 I am grateful for this point to Jessica Noll. For a different interpretation, see Hussein (2012).