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GSCIS Singapore 2015 (Panel: SD01)

His Majesty’s Armed Forces――Reassessment of Hashemite Kingdom of ’s Military Capabilities before/after the Arab Spring1

Takuro Kikkawa (Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University)

Introduction: Is Jordan a weak state? Mashriq2 since the Arab Spring breakout has been in a vicious circle of violence caused by both state and private actors in the region. Many Arab states, even regional hegemonies reluctantly admit that they are incomplete to deter serious challenges from non-state militia groups. For example, both (once considered itself the vanguard of Arab Nationalism) and (in the middle of arms buildup with support of the US Armed Forces) are trapped in the endless fighting against the al-Qaida dropout militia which is known as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This phenomenon clearly shows that we have to reconsider the problem of “weak-state security dilemma” as the core argument among all Middle Eastern conflicts today.3 This paper tries to explore what are the meanings of national security and military strength in an unstable security situation in Mashriq today focusing on the case of Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, an Arab monarchy which has been under the rule of the Hashemite monarchs. Firstly, I try to introduce both the arguments on the Jordanian security and the history of the Jordanian national military very briefly.4 Secondly, I investigate the Jordanian security

1 The author is an associate professor in the College of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU). I would like to thank the

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant-in-Aid (KAKENHI: 21730132) for its financial support. I wish to acknowledge Kota

Suechika, Satoru Nakamura, Shingo Hamanaka and Akifumi Ikeda for valuable comments on draft. Words and names common in English language take the familiar form (e.g. “Jordan” and not “Urdunn”) and when an individual has a preferred spelling of his / her name in English (e.g. “Hani

Hourani” and not “Hānī Ḥurānī”).

2 In the broad sense, Mashriq means a region that covers the eastern part of the (Nagasawa [2002]. This article regards Syria, ,

Jordan, Occupied Palestine, Iraq and as Mashriq.

3 Barry Buzan defines weak states are those with (1) high levels of political violence, (2) a conspicuous role for political police in the everyday life of citizens, (3) major political conflict over what ideology will be used to organize the state, (4) lack of coherent national identity, or the presence of contending national identities within the state, (5) lack of a clear and observed hierarchy of political authority, and (6) a high degree of state control over the media (Buzan [1991: 100]).

4 As for reference on the history of , we should list the works written by a retired Jordanian officer Abu Nuwar and El-

Edroos, former Pakistani military advisor to Jordan (Abu Nuwar [2005], El-Edroos [1980]). Especially El-Edroos (1980) is still a groundbreaking publication that comprehensively analyzed the history of politico-military affairs in Jordan and pointed to the Hashemite Kings’ special role as “soldier king” who concurrently being both political and military leaders (El-Edroos [1980: 562-563]). Though Hupp (2014) is a book on the US foreign policy on Jordan, it is a really reliable reference to understand the Jordanian security policies between the 1950s – the 1970s, vividly delineating the process of

US-Jordanian security cooperation buildups as which inevitable reaction against the pressure by war-prone neighbors. Anderson (2005) is also an 1

Draft Paper: DO NOT quote, copy and reproduce content in this paper without the author’s permission. today. Here I analyze the process that the Jordanian armed forces transform itself into post-modern military organization then draw a rough sketch on the new Jordanian security policy following the Arab Springs breakout.

Ⅰ. Jordanian Security Studies Theoretically, Jordan is a typical weak state. 5 On development, Jordan has always been under the economic- demographic pressures as it lacked enough economic power, scarce of natural resources and water to feed its 6.5 million nations. 6 On diplomacy and security, its geopolitical location surrounded by war-prone regional actors such as Israel, Egypt and Syria has often driven Jordan seeking its protection by external powers – once UK then USA. Such external pressures also come from inside of Jordan. The issues of the over two-million Palestinian refugees in Jordan and the uncounted former-Palestinian Jordanians are still the catalyst to make the Jordanian government sensitive to the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts and to force it to take tough measure against democratization movements to keep subtle balance of power between the old comers and the Palestinian Jordanians. Thus some critics referred to the concept of buffer state to explain the polity of Jordan, which is always in predicament in the anarchic nature of Mashriq seeks neutral or good-neighbor policy toward its war-prone neighbors for state survival. According to former Jordanian diplomat Marwan Muashir, the success of the bilateral peace agreement between Jordan and Israel in 1994 broke the curse of buffer state on some level, making Jordan act more independently (Muasher [2008: 13-32]). Laurie Brand also argued that Jordan’s weak economic structure had driven the state toward dependency on foreign aids (Brand [1994]). To sum up, Jordan’s decades-long structured vulnerability both in domestic and regional societies made a significant contribution to construct the image of passive and client buffer state. Nevertheless, those arguments seem inadequate to analyze the present-day Jordanian security and its military capabilities. Firstly, even if Jordan is still a buffer state, preceding Middle Eastern Studies have not yet analyzed the historical processes how Jordan acquired its resilience against security threats, as they lack perspectives of international political history.7 Secondly, those arguments are based on the premise of subtle balance of power between Arabs and Israel and the many state actors including Arab authoritarian regimes are in stable condition. However in recent years, most Middle Eastern states except a few GCC states they are all under the security threat from non-state actors, namely domestic insurgency, global terrorism and demographic threat caused by the wave of refugees from some failed Arab states (Kamrava [2013: 290-298]). Be that as it may, we still have a question – what makes Jordanian security still stable in the region-wide turmoil following the breakout of the Arab Spring? Benjamin Miller’s works on war propensity still raise a big question, what are the key factors to maintain the regional order – the state to state balance of power, or the state to

insightful work that draws the complicated power distribution among the King, Prime Minister, armed forces and police in the late 1950s.

5 Contrary to its fragile state foundations, however, the Jordanian government has shown its strength to overcome the early phase of democratization movements, by bringing some major strong social forces namely labor unions to the negotiation table. See Kikkawa (2014).

6 See, for example World Bank website (http://data.worldbank.org/country/jordan). Accessed on October 20, 2014.

7 See, for example, Ashton (2008) and Shlaim (2007). 2

Draft Paper: DO NOT quote, copy and reproduce content in this paper without the author’s permission. nation balance? For Miller, the latter “the high level of state-to-nation imbalance” should be the main and deep cause of the Middle East’s high war proneness (Miller [2006, 2007]). He points out the state-to-nation imbalance in the Middle Eastern states “is not quantifiable only in terms of the number of states and the number of ethnic groups. (snip) because of the source of imbalance there is not only the incongruence, which is as high there as in many other Third World regions, but particularly the external incongruence and the trans-border spread of ethno-national groups, which are higher there than in other regions (Miller [2006: 667]).” Therefore, any Middle Eastern states that unconquered their incongruences may be faced with a big dilemma being labeled as “illegitimate state” by both internal and external challengers namely irredentist-revisionist states (e.g. Greater Syria or Greater Israel), regional- transnational movements (e.g. Arab Nationalism, Islamism) and secessionisms (Ibid). For this argument, again Jordan should be a typical weak state as it has been suffered from the threats of irredentist-revisionist states (Nasser’s Egypt, Israel in 1967, Syria in 1970) and the Palestinian secessionists. Jordan does not have resource wealth like GCC states that enables to win domestic-rent seekers over to state’s side. Needless to say, national unity through democratization is an ideal option to conquer state-nation incongruence. However, the Hashemite monarchy still has some big obstacles to relax the laws on political liberty like Morocco, perhaps the sole Arab monarchy that has already launched a comprehensive and drastic political reforms. As Kamrava noted, “compounding the economic difficulties of relatively small rent revenues are the lack of a historically resonant tradition of monarchy, especially in Jordan, and the problems of crafting a popular lore of monarchical legitimacy based on local tradition and heritage (Kamrava [2013: 230]).” Despite the high risk for domestic instability following the Arab Spring, the Jordanian Army has leeway to deploy its troops for international cooperation, namely sending its medical team to after the Earthquake in 2011 and joining the U.S. led joint strikes against ISIS since September 2014.8 Obviously, making a state and its nation as congruent is a fundamental for all nation states. In the case of Jordan, some political studies have already explored its troubled efforts to gain mass support.9 Nevertheless, daringly, I’d like to say the focal issue here should be on security. Though the current insecurities in Syria, Iraq, Northern Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya are mainly caused by the mass uprising, their dysfunctional armed forces also contributed to worsen the conflicts. Therefore, to understand the source of Jordanian military capabilities, we need to perceive the Jordanian security as a whole, as an argument of regime security considering all the various factors namely history, international relations, state – society relations and military systems.

Ⅱ. The Origins of Jordanian Armed Forces National security what we call today is “perceived as a fundamental duty of the government and as a task that must be supported by most if not all citizens (Kennedy [2013: 118]). The Jordanian Armed Forces was born in the 1920s, to play a role in the British colonial ruling in Mashriq. To control Mashriq without its regular army deployment, the

8 See, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/local/pdfs/jordan_1106.pdf. Accessed on October 20, 2014), Jordanian

Armed Forces (http://jaf.mil.jo/Arabic/CommunityDevelopment/Pages/JRMS.aspx. Accessed on October 20, 2014) and Terrill [2010: 42-43].

9 See, for example, Lucas (2005), Kitazawa (2011) and Kikkawa (2014). 3

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British government created some local armed forces. The weakness of the local forces were complemented by the air power of the Royal Air Force (RAF). The British government sent a RAF squadron to Palestine and started recruiting local soldiers. In Transjordan, Colonel Peake (. Final rank as Lieutenant General), appointed as the military commander in the area, recruited former Ottoman military officers, Transjordanians, Hijazi and Syrians. Abdullah’s private soldiers were also incorporated into the , the first Transjordanian regular army which was established in 1923. The British Mandate Government of Palestine gained complete control of the Arab Legion. The highest ranks namely Commander and Chief of Budget Bureau in the Arab Legion in 1929 were occupied by the five British officers, contrary to the fact that most of the Arabs were ranked as soldier or aidman (Abu-Nowar [2006: 6]). London also provided agile support for the British Mandate Government by stationing a of RAF attack airplanes and armed vehicles in Transjordan. , who became Peake’s deputy in 1930 brought significant transformation to the Transjordanian military systems. Glubb formed and commanded the Desert Patrol Forces (DPF) to control the desert-border area and successfully ceased the cross-frontier tribal raiding, and later realigned it and the other military units including the Arab Legion as the national army. Glubb also “ensured that the bulk of new recruitment for the expanding force came from the desert Bedouin. This gave the Legion and later the national army of Jordan, which was formed from it, the predominantly tribal (and therefore conservative) background it still has today (Milton-Edwards and Hinchcliffe [2009: 24-25]).” The outbreak of the Middle Eastern Wars in 1948 doomed Jordan to the open-ended battles. The wars were complex and diverse regional conflicts with which so many powers fought for security dilemma on Israel, nationalism, regional power game and sometimes proxy wars under the Cold War international systems. Nevertheless, first and last, the wars were the struggles among artificial states for regime survival (Miller [2006: 676], Hupp [2014: 186- 187]). To put it briefly, the Jordanian security in the Middle Eastern Wars could be classified roughly a struggle against revisionisms Zionism and Arab Nationalism and another struggle for regime survival fighting against strong social forces. Thus the Hashemite Kings have always tried to focus on what is most important to them, that is, to build a functional and loyal “His Majesty’s Armed Forces.” Through the fierce conflicts against the Arab Nationalists in the late 1950s and the 1960s, King Hussein became progressively play a fundamental role as a soldier king in the Jordanian national military (El-Edroos [1980]). The Jordan-Israel Peace in 1994 and the following Middle East Peace Process brought significant impact in Jordanian security system. It meant the threats from Israel or the possible Palestinian resistance that had endangered Jordan’s 600 kilometer-long western border area over four decades suddenly vanished, making the role of the Jordanian border patrol go back to the DPF era. To sum up, the Peace and the more commitment of the international society (especially the ) in the regional security liberated Jordan in a considerable way from a big dilemma being labeled as illegitimate state by both war-prone irredentist-revisionist states and possible secessionisms among the Palestinian Jordanians.

Ⅲ. Military Reforms in the Era of New Wars The new regional security order in the 1990s brought paradigm shift in the Jordanian Armed Forces. The utter defeat 4

Draft Paper: DO NOT quote, copy and reproduce content in this paper without the author’s permission. of Iraqi Forces in the Gulf War meant that decades-long Arab Nationalist efforts to win over Israel, unite Arab and liberate Palestine, they were all in stalemate. Because of such “cold peace” situation in Mashriq that decreased the proximity of war, the Jordanian Armed Forces endeavored transforming itself to postmodern organization (figure 4).10 The Crown Prince Abdullah’s accession of throne in 1999 has accelerated this trend.

1．Transformation from modern military organization to post-modern King Abdullah’s political reforms since 1999 could be summarized as follows, (1) economic reforms (e.g. budget deficit cut, rise in employment), (2) internationalism (multi-faceted diplomacy, reaffirming Jordan’s adherence to the Middle East Peace Process), (3) promotion of moderate nationalism under assumption of abandonment of the in 1988 and the 1994 Peace Treaty with Israel (Kikkawa [2014]). Under the new military ruler’s leadership, the Jordanian Armed Forces has promoted its transformation from modern military organization to post-modern, eyeing the post-Cold War security trends.11

Border Patrol Jordan shares its border with Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the West Bank and Israel. Today, especially after the 1994 Peace, the Jordanian border patrol places a heavy emphasis on monitoring smugglers and terrorists crossing its border. However, the Syrian civil war since 2011 created new flows of refugees and displaced persons to Jordan and increased the risk of new border crisis. The Jordanian armed forces is troubled with frequent incidents caused by international criminals taking advantage of the Syrian turmoil and the complex geography in the northern border of Jordan.12 It also faces a new challenge – how to deter the rising tide of ISIS coming from the western Iraq13

Peace Keeping Operations (PKO) Since 1989, Jordan has sent more than 61,000 soldiers to over 18 conflict areas to support UN peacekeeping missions and has correspondingly become the fourth largest provider of such forces to the UN after , and Bangladesh. 14 As Terrill noted, contributions to UN peace missions from small nations like Jordan “are an important way of keeping these efforts viable, since many peacekeeping operations do not include troops from major powers to prevent local nationals from becoming concerned about great powers agendas in their region (Terrill [2010: 42]).” The Jordanian PKO missions cover broader area today, from Africa to Europe.

Anti-Terror

10 See, for example, Moskos, Williams and Segal, eds [1999].

11 As a graduate of Sand Hurst, he held prominent positions such as the commander of Special Forces. The final rank in his military career was major general.

12 “Clashes erupt anew along Syria border.” Jordan Times, May 18, 2014. http://jordantimes.com/clashes-erupt-anew-along-syria-border. Accessed on

May 19, 2014.

13 http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140623/DEFREG04/306230026/Official-Jordan-Reinforces-Border-Iraq. Accessed on July 1, 2014.

14 In 2011, it was ranked as the third largest provider of the peacekeeping missions to the UN (Jordan Times, April 26, 2011). 5

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Recently Jordan found its new role as a center of anti-terror operation trainings that is open to its international allies. The International Counter Terrorism Training Center of Excellence, managed by former military personnel runs mega King Abdullah Special Operations Training Center (KASOTC) with which to provide predeployment training, joint and combined military exercises for Jordan’s allied forces from US, UK, GCC and North African states.15

2．Expanding Military Business Curiously, King Abdullah’s liberal economic reform policies also cover Jordan’s military industries. In October 1999, the King dispatched a royal decree to establish a national defense King Abdullah Ⅱ Design and Development Bureau (KADDB). KADDB acquired a vast land near and constructed KADDB Industrial Park in 2009, its own Qualified Industrial Zone. KADDB not only supplies the domestic military demand from ration to APC, but eagerly broaden its international networking, for example arms export to GCC states, joint development and partnership with American, British and GCC military industries. It is notable that KADDB and its commercial branch KADDB Investment Group (KIG) promote diversification of operation in the local market. In addition to producing military supplies, KIG expands its service in engineering, hospital, security and food company management. KADDB seems still small, but is being a well-qualified military-industrial complex in Jordan.16

3．Jordanian Security Policy under the Arab Spring Turbulence Snowballing Arab Spring turmoil also urged Jordan’s security policies to be revisited. The government not only raised the alert level for border control, but also sought a new way to assume a larger role in regional security by seeking broader cooperation with the US and Saudi armed forces than ever. The US government is being more positive to provide its new weapon systems to Jordan,17 and to carry out larger military exercises jointly with Jordan. In 2014, over 20 national militaries participated in the multinational joint exercise “Eager Lion 2014,” which was held in Jordan.18 Saudi Arabia also extends its financial assistance to Jordan in support of its struggle against several obstacles that may threaten the northern Saudi border via Jordan.19 Ironically, the current “walking on the tight rope” situation in Mashriq enables Jordan to become a net recipient of international aid.20

15 Defense News, May 20, 2014. http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140520/TRAINING/305200050/In-Mideast-Demand-Outpaces-Growing-

Training-Industry?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|p. Accessed on May 30, 2014.

16 KADDB website (www.kaddbinvest.com). It is also noteworthy that KADDB exchanged MOUs with the Jordanian Engineer Association (JEA), one of the strongest interest groups in Jordan in September 2014 (http://kaddb.mil.jo/ContentParts/Pages/LatestNews/wfrmViewLatestNews.aspx?ID=41).

17 Jordan became the first foreign user of the APKWS, the US Navy’s new air-to-surface rocket system. “Jordan Is First Importer of BAE Rocket System.”

Defense News, May 10, 2014. http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140510/DEFREG04/305100026/Jordan-First-Importer-BAE-Rocket-System.

Accessed on May 19, 2014.

18 “24 Countries to Take Part in Jordan War Games.” Defense News, May 18, 2014. http://www.defensenews.com/article/

20140518/DEFREG04/305180010/. Accessed on May 19, 2014. For the same exercise in 2014, see http://jordantimes.com/troops-from-jordan-three- allies-train-on-regaining-borders. Accessed on June 6, 2014.

19 http://jordantimes.com/jordan-secures-financial-assistance-from-saudi-arabia. Accessed on October 10, 2014.

20 See, for example http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2012/pr12288.htm. Accessed on June 24, 2014. 6

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The bitter reality that some Arab states which have been thought as regional hegemon are actually weak paper tigers brings “old and new” theme in the field of Middle Eastern security studies – what are the keys for regime security in a series of regional turbulence? The case of Jordanian security clearly tells us some very simple facts, state must have a loyal armed forces and enough international support (in other words, support from great powers) for its legitimacy. Jordan, at the very least had both. From that perspective, Miller’s Middle East state-nation incongruence hypothesis still provides an important framework on regime security analysis in the region. In September 2014, the US government declared the military intervention against ISIS and the Jordanian government pledged its military support for the American-led coalition forces. Jordan’s such proactive contribution and its willingness to project power could be interpreted as action in reciprocation for the donor nations. To sum up, Jordan should be still a weak buffer state. However, it seems Jordan has already found its evolving role being an “offensive” buffer state in the current unstable military situation of Mashriq.

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