The power triangle : military, security, and politics in regime change

425 Pages·2016·2.29 MB·English

by  Kandil

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The Power Triangle

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The Power Triangle
Military, Security, and PoliticS
in regiMe change
Hazem Kandil
3
3
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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© Oxford University Press 2016
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Kandil, Hazem, author.
Title: The power triangle : military, security, and politics in regime change /
Hazem Kandil.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015047834 | ISBN 9780190239206 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Regime change. | Regime change—Egypt. | Regime change—Iran.
| Regime change—Turkey. | Civil-military relations—Egypt. | Civil-military
relations—Iran. | Civil-military relations—Turkey. | Egypt—Politics and
government—21st century. | Iran—Politics and government—21st century. |
Turkey—Politics and government—21st century.
Classification: LCC JC489 .K36 2016 | DDC 321.09—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015047834
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
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To Naheed
“I don’t write about victims so much as I write about the people who have
power, who exert the power, and who use the power against other people.”
—Gore Vidal, The United States of Amnesia, 2013
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CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: From Revolution to Regime
Change 1
PART I | Iran: Royalism and Revolution
1 A One- Man Coup: February 1921 35
2 A Coup de Théâtre: August 1953 43
3 The Road to Persepolis and Back: August
1953– January 1978 56
4 The Coup That Never Was: January 1979 84
5 Checks and Balances: The Realist Version:
February 1979 and After 108
PART II | Turkey: The Limits of Military Guardianship
6 The Founding Coup: March 1924 143
7 The Corrective Coup: May 1960 158
8 The Communiqué Coup: March 1971 169
9 The Passive Revolution: September 1980 173
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10 The White Coup: June 1997 180
11 Aborted Coups? November 2002 and After 192
PART III | Egypt: The Politics of Repression
12 Militarism and Its Discontents: March 1954 231
13 Blood, Folly, and Sandcastles: June 1967 247
14 Becoming a Police State: October 1973 267
15 The Long Road to a Short Revolution:
October 1981– January 2011 303
16 The Resilience of Repression: January 2011 and
After 322
Conclusion: Revolution, Reform,
and Resilience 362
Index 387
|
viii Contents
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PREFACE
In power struggles, there are no lasting victories— only the ceaseless clash
of wills. This is why regimes constantly change. Sudden, dramatic, popu-
larly forced changes impress themselves upon us as revolutions. Less spec-
tacular ones, brought forth by pressure and compromise, are the much less
memorable reforms. Frustratingly slow rearrangements of power at the top,
with limited reverberations below, are symptoms of resilience. The impor-
tant thing is: regimes, defined simply as how society is ruled, are never
entirely stagnant. And revolution, reform, and resilience are essentially dif-
ferent labels describing the same phenomenon, that is, regime change.
Yet studies of regime change have been long divided into three sepa-
rate fields, depending on the speed and extent of change: revolution theory,
mostly developed by sociologists; transition theory, a preferred niche for
reform- minded political scientists; and the residual and exotic phenomenon
of authoritarian resilience, commonly relegated to area specialists. To end
this clearly unhelpful division, one must examine how regimes operate over
decades, rather than just parachute onto the most exciting episodes. To quote
Cambridge historian Herbert Butterfield: “History is not the study of origins;
rather it is the analysis of all the mediations by which the past was turned
into our present” ([1931] 1965: 3). Only long-t erm studies can capture revolu-
tion, reform, and resilience through a single lens.
This book presents one such attempt. It starts with a historical puzzle.
In the first half of the twentieth century, officers in Iran, Turkey, and Egypt
decided to pull their once great nations up by the bootstraps and shepherd
them back to the path of progress. These revolutions from above were all
conceived in the name of modern state building, and occurred in compara-
ble settings only a few years apart. But despite similarities, they met different
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