What Tips an Army When a Dictator Begins to Teeter

THERE COMES A moment in almost every repressive regime when leaders - and the military forces that have long kept them in power - must make a choice from which there is usually no turning back: Change or start shooting. In Libya, the military appeared divided on its loyalties to Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, with some security forces reportedly joining the opposition, while others opened fire on protesters.

Egypt’s military, calculating that it was no longer worth defending an 82-year-old, out-oftouch pharaoh with no palatable successor and no convincing plan for Egypt’s future, ultimately sided with the protesters on the street.

In so doing, they ignored the advice of the Saudis, who, in calls to Washington, said that President Hosni Mubarak should open fire if that’s what it took, and that Americans should just stop talking about “universal rights” and back him.

As the contagion of democracy protests spread in the Arab world , Bahrain’s far less disciplined forces decided, in effect, that the Saudis, who are their next-door neighbors, were right. They drew two lessons from Egypt: If President Obama calls, hang up. And open fire early.

In both countries, as in nearly all police states, the key to change lies with the military. And as with any self-interested institution, the military’s leaders can be counted on to ask: What’s in it for us?

Egypt’s military, with its business enterprises, to say nothing of its American aid and high-tech arms, required a transition that would let it retain power while allowing Washington to herald gradual, substantive reform.

In Bahrain, on the other hand, the military decided to ignore President Obama’s advice, which it regarded as assisted suicide. None of this came as much of a surprise to the White House, which last summer, at President Obama’s request, began examining the vulnerability of these regimes and more recently began examining what makes a transition to democracy successful.

Michael McFaul, a top national security aide at the White House who runs what he jokingly calls the White House “Nerd Directorate,” spent weeks churning out case studies for President Obama and the National Security Council. “There is not one story line or a single model,” said Mr. McFaul . “There are many paths to democratic transition, and most of them are messy.”

Egypt certainly started out that way, with street battles between police and protesters, and a rampage by thugs to rout the protesters from Tahrir Square. But American officials, recalling their strained conversations with Egyptian counterparts, say they knew that Mr. Mubarak’s days were numbered eight days into the crisis, when the military made clear that it simply would not fire on its own people. “We just kept repeating the mantra, ‘Don’t break the bond you have with your own people,’ ” said one senior American official who was involved in the delicate negotiations.

Their words were persuasive, in no small part, many American officials believe, because of the military’s deep ties to the American military. A 30-year investment paid off as American generals, corporals and intelligence officers quietly called and emailed friends they had trained with.

But now comes the trickiest part, which is making the military hold to its promises to allow a civilian government to flourish. That will mean the military must give up its monopoly on power, and that isn’t easy when it is deeply invested in its country’s economy - a trait Egypt’s army shares with the People’s Liberation Army in China.

The question is whether Egypt’s military can manage a transition to democracy, as the militaries of South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Chile have.

South Korea is the clearest example of a good outcome . The country is now among the most prosperous in the world . In the face of large street protests in the mid-1980s, the generals gradually allowed free elections.

Then there is Indonesia. General Suharto ruled for 31 years - then lost momentum . He lasted two and a half weeks after riots broke out in 1998 .

It took the Indonesian military little more than a year to hold elections. Karen Brooks, a former White House expert on Indonesia, said that a clear deadline was important, but so was allowing the Islamists to enter politics. Even in the world’s most populous Islamic nation, she notes, the Islamic parties have remained a small minority .

In Bahrain , the military told the Pentagon that it would never allow Shiites into serious positions. “We were told the Shia would all be spies for Iran,” said one former senior official in the Defense Department .

So when the protests started, the military decided that if it held its fire, it would have no future: The Shiite majority would take over . The military leaders bet on King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. The day his son, Crown Prince Salman, was placed in charge of starting a “national dialogue,” troops opened fire again.

Abderrahim Foukara, the bureau chief of Al Jazeera’s Arabic service in Washington, said the crackdown’s consequences are predictable. “Once you shoot women and children at 3 in the morning, you may be able to hold on to power for a while, but any sense of legitimacy is gone,” he said.

But other people said the same thing about the People’s Liberation Army in Beijing when it opened fire in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Today that army has far-flung business interests that make it so rich and powerful that most of China’s leaders will not challenge it.


DAVID E. SANGER
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