Guns, Power, and Markets: The Military and the State in the Middle East, 1970-2010

自1945年以来，尤其是自1965年石油财富崛起以来，军队一直是中东国家政权和政治建设的核心。它影响了对民主化、经济政策和社会协定的态度和政策，并发动了无数的国家间战争和内战。在整个过程中，它影响了公众参与政治的模式和规则，越来越多地参与商业活动，近年来将安全职能分包给私人代理人和国家支持的准军事人员。然而，自从20世纪60年代和70年代初的开创性研究以来，尽管政治制度、经济和人口结构发生了翻天覆地的变化，国家部门和武装部队在整个中东地区大规模扩张，但对军事的研究却很少。主要的例外是以色列和土耳其，但对阿拉伯国家和伊朗军事系统研究的缺乏更加引人注目。这在一定程度上是由于军事政变的减少：从1949年到1971年的24次政变或严重的企图，到此后的十年里只有一次。这种趋势通常归因于文职精英的稳定战略或军事专业化，这些过程被视为“驯服”了军队并促使其回归军营。事实上，在过去40年里，该地区的军队成功地在现有的政治和宪法制度中确保了自己的议程，使自己陷入权力精英、政治制度以及民事和商业网络之中。因此，他们的干预变得更加谨慎。许多中东地区的军队也作为重要人口部门的社会福利系统而受到重视，但随着经济自由化和私有化侵蚀生活水平和扩大收入差距，这一功能日益受到压力。一些军队试图通过旨在产生预算外收入流的商业活动来抵消这种减少。总之,该项目旨在填补这一缺口在历史奖学金通过分析多元化,扩展,和转换角色的中东军队巨大的社会转型的背景下自1970年代油价革命,经济自由化和私有化自1980年以来,和战略变化,冷战结束,美国力量的投影,出现新的国际安全议程自9/11和全球反恐战争。最后，对军队的正确理解对于西方旨在实现中东武装部队民主控制和安全部门改革的政策的成功至关重要，作者作为政策顾问定期对此作出贡献。

The military has been central to the construction of state power and politics in the Middle East since 1945, and especially since the rise of oil wealth from 1965 onwards. It has affected attitudes and policies towards democratization, economic policies, and social pacts, as well as waging numerous inter-state and civil wars. Throughout it has influenced modes and rules of public participation in politics, engaged increasingly in commercial activity, and in recent years has sub-contracted security functions to private agents and state-sponsored paramilitaries. Yet the military has rarely been researched since the path-breaking studies of the 1960s and early 1970s, despite sweeping transformations in political systems, economies, and demographics and the massive expansion of state sectors and armed forces throughout the Middle East. The main exceptions have been Israel and Turkey, but the dearth of systematic study of the military in the Arab states and Iran is all the more remarkable. This is partly due to the decline of military coups d'état: from 24 coups or serious attempts in 1949-1971, to only one a decade since then. This trend is often attributed to stabilization strategies by civilian elites or to military professionalization, processes that are seen to have 'tamed' the military and prompted its return to the barracks. In fact, the region's militaries have succeeded over the past four decades in securing their agendas within existing political and constitutional systems, enmeshing themselves in power elites, political systems, and civil and business networks. Their interventions have consequently become more discreet. Many Middle East militaries have also acquired importance as social welfare systems for significant population sectors, but this function is increasingly under strain as economic liberalization and privatization erode living standards and widen income disparities. Some militaries have sought to offset the decline through commercial activities intended to generate extra-budgetary income streams. In summary, the project seeks to fill the gap in historical scholarship by examining the diversification, extension, and transformation of the roles of Middle East militaries in the context of massive social transformation since the 1970s oil price revolution, economic liberalization and privatization since 1980, and strategic change that has seen the end of the Cold War, projection of American power, and emergence of a new international security agenda since 9/11 and the global war on terror. Ultimately, proper understanding of the military is critical to the success of Western policies aimed at bringing about democratic control of armed forces and security sector reform in the Middle East, to which the author contributes regularly as a policy advisor.