ABSTRACT
Ensuring political control over the military entails depriving it of both the means and the motives to challenge the regime. Leaders use a combination of inducements and safeguards to give the armed forces a vested interest in the status quo, and to make it difficult for them to conspire against the regime by increasing the costs and risks of doing so. The expansion of the private sector and of the middle class has important implications for the military's position in the regime. In the 1980s, the private sector coexisted and often collaborated with the military which, under then Defence Minister Field Marshal Abdel al-Halim Abu Ghazala, significantly expanded its economic activities. Purges are a powerful way of controlling the military's composition and safeguarding against opposition. They both remove undesirables, and demonstrate a regime's power and authority, thereby deterring would-be trouble-makers.
