Arab Armies, Economy, and the Arab Spring Since this panel is based on a two-year research project that most presenters have been collaborating in since June 2012, this paper sets the theoretical approaches and the general argument for all presentations. Then, it attempts to draw general patterns and underscores differences. This paper investigates whether economic interests were behind the different ways Arab military institutions reacted to the uprisings during the last two years. In addition, it investigates whether such interests influenced the way Arab militaries participated in the processes of forging post-revolutionary regimes. The paper focuses on four Arab armies that historically either owned business enterprises or were involved in patron-client relations with business elites in their countries: the armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and the Sudan. The paper argues that economic positions and interests of the Arab military institutions can explain their support, inactivity, repression or violent suppression of protest movements, and active engagement or inactivity in the socio-political processes of transformation that followed the Arab Spring uprisings during the last two years. The paper combines and applies two theoretical approaches to identify economic motives of state militaries and other armed groups in the four studied Arab countries. The first is a political economy approach, which explores the resource base of the armed actors within the formal and informal structures of each of the four studied regimes. The paper assesses the behavior of these armed actors towards popular movements in view of potential gains or losses of power derived from economic privileges. The second is a social theory approach, which examines the preservation, consolidation, or creation of new institutions and structural frameworks of the armed forces and other militant groups during transformation processes after the uprisings. This approach emphasizes that armed forces constitute and consolidate their institutions based on social relation with other socio-economic agents and with similar or opposed interests within their regimes. In the light of these two approaches, the paper taps into a wide variety of primary and secondary sources to investigate the four cases. Scrutinized primary sources include official state documents, publications of ministries of defense, Arabic media reports, interviews with officers at different rankings, with leaders of non-state armed groups, and with economic actors who share interests with or have interests opposed to the economic institutions of the military.

The UAE is quickly becoming a niche location for high-tech, small-scale defense manufacturing – primarily by requiring foreign defense firms to sign collaborative production agreements or establish weapons maintenance facilities as a condition of their sales contracts. This strategy includes a focus on providing financing to develop next generation weapons systems (such as Raytheon’s Patriot missile), investing large sums in laboratories and testing facilities to encourage firms to re-locate their research and development (R&D) activities, and a multi-tiered effort to become a global hub for the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) industry. Although these defense industrial projects are promoted as a means to help meet the federation’s economic goals, the simultaneous increase in the influence of the UAE’s military and security institutions suggests that these initiatives are not solely based on business fundamentals. The increasing participation of Royal Family members in positions of military leadership, the increasing sophistication of regional arms procurement strategies and the officials that implement them, and the ability of non-Royal families with legacies of military service to gain positions within UAE government agencies, are all indications that the military class may be coalescing into a coherent social group with distinct corporatist interests. This phenomenon is unique in the Gulf – a region where military influence has been minimized (and loyalty to the incumbent regime maximized) through recruitment strategies based on the exploitation of social and ethnic cleavages and the inculcation of rivalries between different service branches and affiliated agencies. By contrast, military prestige in the UAE has been facilitated via a number of avenues, including the increasing number of exchanges that bring Gulf military officers to train at U.S. and European military colleges and defense research institutes, and the large investments made in regional research centers. Although many of the latter are touted as initiatives to prevent local brain drain, they have also attracted foreign defense firms, which have poured money and personnel into defense-technology research programs housed in these new centers, and established scholarships and internship programs that steer engineering and computer science students into careers with regional defense subsidiaries. This paper will explore how the dynamics of the contemporary global arms market have contributed to the rise of military-industrial production in the UAE and examine some of the early indicators of increasing military influence within state institutions – including a preliminary effort to map connections between military officials, prominent Emirati businessmen, and foreign defense firms using network analysis.

This paper explores the impact of neo-liberal economic policies on the military institution in Egypt before and after the 2011 uprisings. It investigates how the Egyptian military created a vast economic empire in Mubarak’s neo-liberal milieu. Then it investigates how the new wave of economic openness, adopted by the Muslim Brothers’ regime, will affect the military’s engagement in the post-revolutionary economy. It argues that the businesses of a formerly socialist army in Egypt flourished in the market environment that Mubarak’s authoritarian regime created in the two decades that preceded the uprisings. After the rise of the Muslim Brothers to power, the Islamist version of market has formed a delicate alliance with the military, where in many cases the bearded capital collaborates and in others collides with the armed capital. Mubarak’s autocracy started to liberalize the economy in 1992, and his son Gamal accelerated the process from 2004 until 2011. During these particular years, the Egyptian army became heavily involved in creating its own enterprises of civilian production and services— including factories, companies, farms, gas stations, and more. Mubarak issued numerous legal codes to privilege the military-owned businesses, with its low-quality products compared to those of private business tycoons, within the national market. The Ministry of Defense’s enterprises were above budget supervision in the parliament, did not pay taxes and tariffs, used conscripts as forced labor, and were immune to privatization. On the eve of the 2011 uprisings and immediately after them while in full power over the state, the Egyptian military expanded its investments in many strategic sectors, such as steel, cement, energy, trade, food production, and more. As the government of the Muslim Brothers has started a new era of neo-liberalism in Egypt, applying for a loan from the IMF and inviting Gulf and international capital to the country, the fate of the military enterprises remains vague. This paper argues that the Muslim Brothers will leave most of the generals’ businesses intact, in order to appease the military institution and maintain the delicate alliance with it. Article No. 197 of the Muslim Brothers’ new constitution already keeps the military budget above public oversight. However, Muslim Brothers’ capitalists are entering into a fierce competition with military capital in large strategic sectors— especially steel and cement—which might negatively affect the less competitive enterprises of the generals. This also might hurt the alliance and shake the post-revolutionary political order.

The small island nation of Bahrain was witness to one of the most vigorous uprisings in the region. The general strike of February 2011 featured an astounding participation rate of over 70% of all employees in Bahrain. At the same time the demands of the Bahraini people – for a constitutional monarchy and not the fall of the regime – were among the most modest and pragmatic. In order to explain the resilience of the Al Khalifas, the Sunni family that has been in power since 1820, this paper will provide an analysis of the Bahrain Defense Force (BDF) as well as the various security forces that are under the Ministry of Interior. It will focus on four areas. First, it will analyze the division of labor between the Al Khalifas, in which the Ministry of Interior traditionally fell under the purview of the Prime Minister, while the BDF was the domain of the King and Crown Prince. Second, it will analyze the naturalization policies since the 1990s. Knowing that their powerbase was tiny, the Al Khalifas began a program of “importing Sunnis” from neighboring countries who were given citizenship and then hired to work in the military and security forces, from which the Shias are still excluded. Third, the paper will analyze the political economy of land usage and land reclamation, which has provided greater revenues to the ruling family than oil wealth. Finally, the paper will investigate the US security relationship with Bahrain, where it has maintained a permanent military presence longer than any other country in the region.