On Sun, 4 Dec 2005 10:05:10 -0500 Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
writes:
> boddi satva lbo.boddi at gmail.com
> Sun Dec 4 01:01:16 PST 2005
> > Yes the military is a well-known champion of democracy.
>
> Throughout history, militaries have served all kinds of polity --
> feudalism, absolute autocracy, constitutional monarchy, empire and
> its colonial administration, republican democracy, socialist
> government, etc. -- and they have participated in coups, rebellions,
>
> and revolutions from the left and the right.
>
> The military in itself has no inherent politics -- it all depends on
>
> who joins it, what they do in it, what historical context confronts
> them, what social forces predominate in society in general, etc.
As I recall, Samuel P. "Maddog" Huntington discussed this issue at some length in his 1968 book, *Political Order in Changing Societies.* As I remember, when he discussed the interventions of militaries into politics, they tended to do so as the guardians of their countries' middle classes. And Huntington developed a whole typology of military coups: breal-through coups, a revolutionary army overthrows a traditional government and creates a new bureaucratic elite, guardian coups, in which power changes hands without any fundamental changes in the social structure and veto coups, when the army vetoes mass participation and social mobilization.
As I said, Huntinton attempted to link the political predelictions of militaries to the role of the middle classes within a given country, both in terms of their relations with with such strata as traditionalist oligarchies on the one hand, and lower level strata such as peasants and workers on the other hand.
So when the middle class of a country was butting heads with a traditionalist oligarchy as was the case in Egypt in the post-WW II era, one might get what Hungtinton calls a break-through coup. Such a coup often leads to a left-leaning military government taking power. The coup by the Free Officers movement in Egypt in the early 1950s would be a classic example. Such coups are usually led by junior officers or even sometimes, non-commissioned officers.
Other left-wing military coups such as the 1968 coup in Peru or Hugo Chavez's abortive 1992 coup in Venezuela would seem to more or less fit this model too.
The various military coups that Turkey has experienced over the years would seem to fit more with what Huntington calls guardian coups. In fact under the constitution that Kemal imposed on Turkey, when he created it out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, the military was charged with the responsibility of defending the constitution and was given the right to depose civilian governments that it judged to be incompetent.
Veto coups represent attempts by the military to quash popular participation in politics. The Chilean 1973 coup against Allendee's government would be a classic example. In that country, the middle class had become alienated from Allendee's government which was seen by them as favoring the interests of workers and the rural poor at their expense.
> In
>
> the case of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Abdel-Hakim Amer, Salah Salem, etc.
> who orgaznied the Free Officers movement in Egypt, they were
> stationed in Palestine during the 1948 war. Naturally they thought
> that they must overthrow the corrupt government of King Farouk that
> oppressed the Egyptian people, served Western rulers, and abandoned
> Palestinians. The military is like any other institution in this
> regard. E.g., in education, there are teachers on the left and
> teachers on the right, principals on the left and principals on the
> right, etc., the rank-and-file tending to be more to the left than
> those in high positions on economic issues. The same goes for the
> military. That's why it is important for leftists to analyze
> empirically the changing demographic compositions and political
> opinions of service members, especially the rank and file (who tend
> to be more to the left than officers).
>
> That said, apart from the question of equitable sharing of the
> burden
> of military service, one of the tenets of republican democratic
> thought is that a force of citizen soldiers is preferred to a
> military totally made up of mercenaries (i.e., volunteers who make
> the military their profession). That may not be always true -- is
> the Israeli military (compulsory service, with some exemptions) more
>
> republican and democratic than the US military (a volunteer
> professional force)? -- but the officers in the US military have
> become more Republican than in the days of the draft: "a study by
> the
> Triangle Institute for Security Studies in North Carolina" shows
> "that between 1976 and 1996 the percentage of military officers who
> saw themselves as nonpartisan or politically independent fell from
> more than 50 percent to less than 20 percent. The main beneficiary
> of
> this shift has been the Republican Party" (David M. Halbfinger and
> Steven A. Holmes, "Military Mirrors Working-Class America," New York
>
> Times, 30 March 2003).
>
> Then again, the rank and file may have moved to the left in the 90s,
>
> and even Republican officers may be more moderate Republicans than
> Republican civilians:
> <blockquote>[F]rom 1976 to 1999, the number of high school seniors
> expecting to enter the military and self-identifying as Republicans
> never exceeded 40 percent and actually declined significantly from
> 1991 to 1999. Despite the end of the draft and the more market-
> inspired and occupational flavor of military service under the all-
> volunteer concept, new recruits “are predominantly not Republican
> and
> are less Republican than their peers who go to college.”17
> Increasingly it seems clear that the young enlisted service members
> who make up a large proportion of the force cannot be characterized
> as predominantly conservative or Republican.
>
> The figures for senior military officers are quite different; about
> two thirds self-identify as Republican. To some extent this reflects
>
> the attitudes of the socio-economic cohort they are drawn from,
> generally defined as non-minority, college educated, belonging to
> mainstream Christian denominations, and above average in income. On
> the other hand, military elites overwhelmingly shun the “far-right”
> or “extremely conservative” labels, are far less supportive of
> fundamentalist religious views, and are significantly more liberal
> than mainstream society as a whole on social issues.18 It is far
> more
> accurate to say that senior military leaders occupy the political
> center than to portray them as creatures of the right.
>
>
>
> 17. David R. Segal et al., “Attitudes of Entry-Level Enlisted
> Personnel: Pro-Military and Politically Mainstreamed,” in Feaver and
>
> Kohn, Soldiers and Civilians, pp. 175-94.
>
> 18. James A. Davis, “Attitudes and Opinions Among Senior Military
> Officers,” in Feaver and Kohn, Soldiers and Civilians, p. 109.
>
> <http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/03winter/hooker.htm></
>
> blockquote>
>
> These complex changes can only be understood by actually studying
> them empirically.
>
> Yoshie Furuhashi
> <http://montages.blogspot.com>
> <http://monthlyreview.org>
> <http://mrzine.org>
>
>
>
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