The Army has played a significant role in contemporary history of the Middle Eastern states. This fact was determined not only by the frequency of wars and military crises but mainly by the role of the military in domestic politics. In the past few decades, the army and security apparatus presented a focal point of Arabian countries’ politics. The military was the center of the power and decision-making mechanism in Middle Eastern countries. In the 1980–1990s Arab rulers managed to curb the appetites of their military for power and military coups. The author studies universal Russian and Western methodological and theoretical approaches and criteria for examining the civil-military relations. A main attention is paid to historical preconditions for the formation of the armed forces in Arab countries. The author also examines the interaction between politics and military, military and society, and tries to show the main reasons behind the army’s seizure of power in many Arab countries from the social, political, and economic backgrounds of military rule. The criteria of civil control over the military and different approaches for preventing the army’s intervention in politics are in the focus of this article. The author stresses the role of national and religious factors in the system of civil-military relations. The role of the ruler and ruling élites in determining the behavioral patterns of the military are the subject of the author’s investigation as well.
army, military, Islam, civil-military relations, Middle East politics, Arab countries