4 - Are Arab Monarchical Militaries Different?

Summary

Chapter 4 deals with monarchical armies, as these allegedly specific cases are usually less addressed in studies about Arab militaries. Italso delves into differences within the monarchies, with Jordan, Morocco and Oman closer to the model of professional/institutionalized Arab armies (with these terms strongly qualified), in contrast to the specific militaries of the Gulf oil states, characterized with overspending in some dimensions (infrastructure and equipment), the maintenance of an understaffed (yet well-paid and “cocooned”) army and the overreliance on the American (or Western) security alliance. It shows that monarchies are not so alien to the military, though they maintain a specific composition. Whatever the differences (and violent encounters) with republics in their trajectory of political development in the two post-independence decades, both types of regimes, monarchies as well as republics, converged in similar authoritarian control after the 1970s. And this chapter also explores a new sense of military assertiveness after 2011 in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.