February 25, 2015
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s suggestion that our
region needs a joint Arab military force to deal with escalating threats from
armed factions in lands like Libya is one of the most ridiculous and
non-credible ideas to emerge in the Arab world for many years. The idea of
joint Arab action for common security needs is a good one in principle, but
given the legacy of Arab military actions at home and abroad, it makes no sense
whatsoever, on many counts.
The most important is that the resort to
military force across the Arab countries in recent decades has been a recurring
catastrophe. Some Arab countries are falling apart one by one under the
destructive impact of runaway militarism, in the absence of legitimate
democratic governance systems. We need less militarism, and more civilian control
of armed forces and police, in the Arab region, not an idiotic new collective
military adventure that only takes the incompetence and national corrosion of
rule-by-officers from the national to the regional level.
We need less, not more, military involvement in
Arab affairs because of the national destruction, distortion and decay our
region has suffered in the past half century or so as a result of five main
sources of debilitating military action. These are:
1. Chronic military attacks or involvements in
our region by foreign powers from East and West; this tradition dates back at
least two centuries in the modern era, and over two millennia in longer
historical terms.
2. The capture and frequent ruin of national
government systems by armed forces, police and intelligence agencies; Iraq,
Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, and Egypt, above all, because Egypt
started this corrosive trend in 1952, are damning case studies in why soldiers
should not run countries.
3. The wasteful and destructive impact of
Arab-Israeli warfare; the Arab-Israeli conflict is one major reason and excuse
that military officers used to take control of Arab governments and transform
them into dictatorships in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, while decades of
disproportionate defense spending (that in any case failed to check the Zionist
threat) was a key reason for Arab domestic developmental weaknesses and state
collapse in some cases.
4. The military involvement by some Arab
countries in the affairs of other Arab countries; Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and
Libya are current best examples, but this has been a problem since the 1950s
and reached crisis conditions in countries like Yemen, Kuwait and Lebanon.
5. The growth of non-state militias and
veritable sectarian or tribal armies within countries where national integrity
has collapsed (often due to the consequences of the first four points above);
as some Arab countries fragment and central governments withdraw from large
regions of their own sovereignties, the vacuum is always filled by armed groups
who often repeat the state’s example of applying militarism at home and abroad.
Military and security agencies have often played
constructive and legitimate roles in many Arab countries, by protecting their
territory and maintaining domestic order, but such legitimate application of
militarism is overwhelmed by the evidence for the problems we suffer from the
widespread militarization of our societies.
So for
general-turned-president-by-another-Egyptian-coup Sisi now to suggest that we
need more joint military action confirms why we should not allow soldiers to
run our countries. President Sisi has not been able to bring order to his own
country, especially in violent Sinai, so how can he possibly expect anyone to
take him seriously when he suggests that we can improve our troubled Arab
condition by taking the proven incompetence of ruling militaries at the
national level to a wider arena of regional military action?
Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq should be
lessons enough in how Arab and foreign armies that move into Arab countries
only create conditions of chaos and ungovernability—and these open the way to
many local armed sectarian and tribal groups, and nowadays create a fertile
environment in which killers like Al-Qaeda and ISIS can take root.
General-turned-president-by-coup Sisi said in
his comments that, "The need for a unified Arab force is growing and
becoming more pressing every day.’’
That is mind-boggling nonsense. A joint Arab
military force to intervene in places like Libya is impossible, first of all,
because Arabs fighting each other is a main reason why Libya is such a mess,
and, second of all, because politicized Arab militaries used at home and abroad
tend to promote chaos and destroy Arab countries, rather than maintain order
and national integrity.
What is becoming more pressing by the day is the
need to promote legitimate democratic, pluralistic governance in Arab countries
where national military and police forces play their important national defense
role under civilian oversight.
Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly in the Daily
Star. He was founding director and now senior policy
fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs
at the American University of Beirut. On Twitter at: @ramikhouri.
Copyright
©2015 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global