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War Making and State Power in the Contemporary Middle East

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Thierry Gongora
Thierry Gongora
Affiliation:
Research Associate at the Institut québécois des hautes études internationales, Université Laval, Québec, Canada.
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Extract

It is now a familiar theme in the literature on the emergence and development of the state in the Western world to refer to war and war preparation—in short, war making—as an important contributing factor to the development of the modern state. As Charles Tilly succinctly put it, “War made the state, and the state made war.” We know, however, little about the relation between war making and the development of the state in the contemporary Middle East. This is rather surprising considering the importance of war and war preparation in the history of many states in the region and the current wave of academic interest in the study of state formation in the Middle East. A review of the literature would show that war is usually integrated as a contingent factor, but not as a systematic process that can influence state development. For instance, accounts of state development in Egypt mention the impact ofthe 1956 and 1967 wars on the capacity of the state to intervene in the economy and society; yet until recently no one had systematically studied the impact of war preparation on state formation in Egypt.

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Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , August 1997 , pp. 323 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

NOTES

1 Author's note: I acknowledge the support of the Groupe d'étude et de recherche sur la sécurité internationale (Université de Montréal), as well as the helpful comments of Michael N. Barnett, Yagil Levy, and Charles Tilly on an earlier version of this paper.

1 For a recent sample of this literature, one can refer to Porter, Bruce D., War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Modern Politics (New York: Free Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Tilly, Charles, Coercion, Capital, and the European States, AD 990–1990 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990)Google Scholar; and Rasler, Karen A. and Thompson, William R., War and State Making: The Shaping of the Global Powers (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989)Google Scholar.

2 Tilly, Charles, “Reflections on the History of European State-Making,” in The Formation of National States in Western Europe, ed. Tilly, Charles (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975), 42Google Scholar.

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29 Hiro, Dilip, Iran under the Ayatollahs (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), 209, 215Google Scholar; and Hooglund, Eric, “The Gulf War and the Islamic Republic,” Merip Reports 125/126 (July–September 1984): 36Google Scholar.

30 After recovering from the revolution, Iran's oil industry reached a peak of exports and revenue for the war years in 1983, with exports of 1.816 million barrels per day and annual revenue of $19,225 million; afterwards, exports and revenues declined. See Kanovsky, , “Economic Implications,” 244–45Google Scholar.

31 See Clawson, , “Islamic Iran's Economic Politics,” 375, 383;Google ScholarHiro, , The Longest War, 175–76Google Scholar; and MacPherson, Angus, “The Economy,” in Iran: A Country Study, 148, 150, 154Google Scholar.

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34 Menashri, David, “Iran,” Middle East Contemporary Survey 10 (1986): 337Google Scholar.

35 Menashri, David, Iran: A Decade of War and Revolution (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1990), 358Google Scholar.

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37 Ehteshami, , After Khomeini, 96Google Scholar. In a rare assessment of taxation in Iraq during the war, analysts came to a similar conclusion: “[T]ax collection procedures have reportedly been tightened up, but at the same time many tax rates have been reduced”; Farouk-Sluglett, et al. , “Not Quite Armageddon,” 28Google Scholar.

38 Clawson, , “Islamic Iran's Economic Politics,” 378Google Scholar.

39 The relationship between the contending priorities of rearmament and economic reconstruction changed over the postwar years. At first, in 1988, it seemed that rearmament would take precedence over economic reconstruction in the allocation of government resources. However, the situation changed after 1990, when the Iraqi military threat receded in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, and the government felt the need to bolster a weak economic recovery with its development expenditure; see Ehteshami, , After Khomeini, 146–47, 169–71Google Scholar.

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42 Following the limited war with Israel in Lebanon in 1982, Syria's military expenditure increased by 43 percent over 1982–85. After 1985, Syria had increasing difficulty in sustaining its defense effort. For example, in 1986, 48 percent of central-government expenditure was allocated to the military, but military expenditure in real terms decreased in comparison to the previous year. By 1989, although 70 percent of central-government expenditure was allocated to defense, military expenditure in real terms was 46 percent lower than in 1985; see Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (hereafter ACDA), World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers (Washington, D.C.: ACDA, 1990), 83Google Scholar. On the doctrine of strategic parity, see, for instance, Khalidi, Ahmed S. and Agha, Hussein, “The Syrian Doctrine of Strategic Parity,” in The Middle East in Global Perspective, ed. Kipper, J. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991), 186–218Google Scholar.

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46 Sadowski, Yahya M., “Cadres, Guns, and Money. The Eighth Regional Congress of the Syrian Baʿth,” Merip Reports 134 (July–August 1985): 5Google Scholar.

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48 These proportions were calculated from data in the IMF's Government Finance Statistics Yearbook (1992); 516Google Scholar; and Government Finance Statistics Yearbook 8 (1984): 766Google Scholar.

49 Hinnebusch, Raymond A., “The Political Economy of Economic Liberalization in Syria,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27 (08 1995): 318Google Scholar.

50 See the assessments in ibid.: 313, 317–18; and in Perthes, Volker, “The Syrian Private Industrial and Commercial Sectors and the State,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24 (05 1992): 211Google Scholar.

51 For analysts who consider the 1967 War as a turning point leading toward an economic liberalization, see, for example, Waterbury, , The Egypt of Nasser and SadatGoogle Scholar; Cooper, , The Transformation of EgyptGoogle Scholar; and Ansari, , Egypt: The Stalled SocietyGoogle Scholar.

52 Barnett, , Confronting the Costs of War, 223Google Scholar.

53 Ibid., 224.

54 Cordesman, and Wagner, , The Lessons of Modern War. Volume I, 14, 350Google Scholar.

55 Safran, Nadav, From War to War: The Arab–Israeli Confrontation, 1948–1967 (New York: Pegasus, 1969), 349Google Scholar.

56 Percentages calculated from estimates of losses in Cordesman, and Wagner, The Lessons of Modern War. Volume I, 150Google Scholar; and data on Syria's, arsenal in The Military Balance (1982–1983), 62Google Scholar.

57 Cordesman, and Wagner, , The Lessons of Modern War. Volume II, 452Google Scholar.

58 The weak-state thesis should also be qualified when one considers the military mobilization ratio achieved by states such as Syria and Iraq in the 1980s, in spite of the alleged lack of legitimacy of their regimes and of communal or ethnic cleavages; their performance in putting men under arms is comparable to that of European states involved in total wars; see, for instance, Tilly, Charles, “War and State Power,” Middle East Report 171 (July–August 1991): 40Google Scholar.

59 Hurewitz, J. C., “The Beginnings of Military Modernization in the Middle East: A Comparative Analysis,” Middle East Journal 22 (Spring 1968): 144–58Google Scholar.

60 On war making and state making in Muhammad Ali's Egypt, see ibid., 145–48; Marsot, Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid, Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ralston, David B., Importing the European Army (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 79–97Google Scholar.

61 On the mobilization of men and resources in Egypt during World War I, see Richmond, J. C. B., Egypt 1798–1952: Her Advance Towards a Modern Identity (London: Methuen & Co., 1977), 173–74Google Scholar; Roubicek, Marcel, Early Modern Arab Armies (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1977), 30Google Scholar; and Vatikiotis, P. J., The History of Modern Egypt, 4th ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 254–55Google Scholar.

62 The following argumentation should not be construed as a monocausal explanation of the decline of statism and the rise of liberalism in the Middle East. Obviously these developments resulted from a convergence of factors, such as the crisis of rentier economies in the 1980s and the shortcomings of stateled development and import-substituting industrialization. The emphasis is laid here on the contribution of war making for two reasons. First, it is a significant result in contrast to the historical pattern found in the European past, where war making was associated with the progress of state interventionism. Second, it is to compensate for the current literature on liberalization in the Middle East, which does not sufficiently take war making into account as a contributing variable to the process of liberalization, probably because war making is not a conventional variable in theories of political economy.

63 In constant 1979 dollar values, the ACDA's figures show an increase in Syrian military expenditure from $402 million in 1971 to $1,999 billion in 1980; World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers 1971–1980 (Washington, D.C.: ACDA, 1983), 68Google Scholar. Estimates of the cost of maintaining the Syrian contingent in Lebanon ranged from $1 million to $3 million per day.

64 Kanovsky, , “Syria's Current Economic Problems,” 294–95Google Scholar.

65 Picard, Elizabeth, “La Syrie de 1946 à 1979,” in La Syrie d'aujourd'hui, ed. Raymond, André (Paris: CNRS/CEROAC, 1980), 182Google Scholar.

66 See Boris, , “The Economy,” 166Google Scholar; and Ramet, Pedro, The Soviet–Syrian Relationship Since 1955: A Troubled Alliance (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990), 114Google Scholar.

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68 See Boris, , “The Economy,” 121Google Scholar; and Chatelus, Michel, “La croissance économique: mutation des structures et dynamisme du déséquilibre,” in La Syrie d'aujourd'hui, 268Google Scholar.

69 High estimates of Iran's foreign debt by 1987–88 put it at around $5 billion or $6 billion; see, for example, Chubin, and Tripp, , Iran and Iraq at War, 129Google Scholar; and Sigler, John, “The Legacy of the Iran-Iraq War,” in Iran at the Crossroads: Global Relations in a Turbulent Decade, ed. Rezun, Miron (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990), 148Google Scholar. In contrast, by the end of the war Iraq had $37 billion to $50 billion in civilian and military debts to Eastern bloc and Western creditors, in addition to the $30 billion to $40 billion received from Arab states of the Gulf; see Parisot, Benoit, “La situation économique et financière de l'lrak à la mi-1990,” Maghreb–Machrek 130 (October–December 1990): 37Google Scholar.

70 See, for example, Menashri, , Iran: A Decade of War, 8Google Scholar; Kechichian, Joseph A. and Sadri, Houman, “National Security,” in Iran: A Country Study, 283Google Scholar; and Schahgaldian, Nikola B., The Iranian Military under the Islamic Republic (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corp., 1987), 54Google Scholar.

71 See Hiro, , The Longest War, 176Google Scholar. On the Revolutionary Guards, see Katzman, Kenneth, The Warriors of Islam: Iran's Revolutionary Guard (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press,), 101Google Scholar.

72 See Schahgaldian, , The Iranian Military, 54–55Google Scholar; Menashri, , Iran: A Decade of War, 390Google Scholar; and idem, “Iran,” Middle East Contemporary Survey 11 (1987): 404,420Google Scholar. It seems that by attempting to manage centrally the war-mobilization effort in the last phase of the war, the Iranian authorities alienated the local representatives of the regime who had played such an essential role in war mobilization in previous years.

73 See Goldberg, Jacob, “The Saudi Arabian Kingdom,” Middle East Contemporary Survey 9 (1984–1985): 588–94Google Scholar; and idem, “Saudi Arabia,” Middle East Contemporary Survey 13 (1989): 574–79Google Scholar.

74 Barnett, , Confronting the Costs of War, 216Google Scholar; Waterbury, , The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat, 69Google Scholar. In this specific case, the increase in state power was due to the circumstances of the war, the presence of assets that could be seized in retaliation for the military intervention of Britain and France in Egypt; this cause had nothing to do with the argument presented here, which concerns the impact of the need to mobilize resources for war and not the contingent outcomes of wars.

75 Tignor, Robert L., State, Private Enterprise, and Economic Change in Egypt, 1918–1952 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), 238–39Google Scholar.

76 Ayoob, Mohammed, The Third World Security Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict, and the International System (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995)Google Scholar.