Abstract
The ripples of the “Jasmine Revolution” have not yet subsided. The events that took place in this seemingly miniscule and impuissant state along the southern Mediterranean have fundamentally transformed Middle Eastern politics. Much mystery still surrounds the events that led up to President Ben Ali’s departure from office on January 14, 2011, but it is clear that the military played the decisive role in his exodus. While many have applauded the Tunisian army as an exemplar of military subordination to democratic values, a closer examination of Tunisian civil-military relations will reveal that the military’s response was more than simple “heroics.”1 When the military found itself in the driver’s seat during the revolution, it made a calculated decision to support the people based upon corporate interests and political restraints.
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Notes
Farhad Khosrokhavar, The New Arab Revolutions That Shook the World (London: Paradigm Publishers, 2012), 29.
Zouheir A. Maalej, “The ‘Jasmine Revolt’ Has Made the ‘Arab Spring’: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Last Three Political Speeches of the Ousted President of Tunisia,” Discourse and Society 23, 6 (2012): 684–687.
Frederick Ehrenreich, “National Security,” in Tunisia: A Country Study, ed. Harold D. Nelson (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1987), 278.
L. B. Ware, “The Role of the Tunisian Military in the Post-Bourguiba Era,” Middle East Journal 39, 1 (Winter 1985): 38.
International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2011 (London: Taylor and Francis, 2011).
Anthony Cordesman and Aram Nerguizian, The North African Military Balance Force Development and Regional Challenges (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic International Studies, 2010), 80–81.
Querine Hanlon, “The Prospects for Security Sector Reform in Tunisia: A Year After the Revolution,” (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2012), 12–20.
Christopher Alexander, Tunisia: Stability and Reform in the Modern Maghreb (London: Routledge, 2010), 90–91.
Roughly 63,000 Tunisians served in the French army during World War I. See Abun Nasr, A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 354. Many Tunisians believed this service earned them the right to their independence. See Alexander, Modern Maghreb, 25.
Cordesman and Nerguizian, Military Balance, 49; Clement Henry, “Tunisia’s ‘Sweet Little’ Regime,” in Worst of the Worst: Dealing with Repressive and Rogue Nations, ed. Robert Rotberg (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2007), 317.
Steffen Erdle, Ben Ali’s New Tunisia (1987–2009): A Case Study of Authoritarian Modernization in the Arab World (Berlin: Klaus, Schwarz, Verlag, 2010), 143–144.
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© 2014 William C. Taylor
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Taylor, W.C. (2014). The Tunisian Military’s “Ambitious Support” of the Arab Awakening. In: Military Responses to the Arab Uprisings and the Future of Civil-Military Relations in the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137410054_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137410054_4
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