This 1999 paper on "Coup-proofing" not only predicts the Iraqi insurgency, but even describes how to beat it, and as a casual afterthought explains why the first Gulf War failed to topple Saddam Hussein and why sanctions were an ineffective idea. If only politicians and generals actually listened to academics. Step this way for a (non-political) review...

My Ph.D. was quite unusual, very multidisciplinary and steeped in the new field of complexity research. I had written an immune system simulation as an undergrad, and in researching that had come up with a theory - could features of "immunity" exist universally in all sorts of non-biological systems? In the course of researching this, I came across the concept of "coup-proofing", and this paper - "Coup Proofing: Its Practices and Consequences in the Middle East" by James Quinlivan, 1999 [1].

"In the aftermath of the US-led coalition's defeat of Iraq in the Gulf War, many observers believed that Saddam Hussein would eventually be toppled in a military coup. After years of dashed hopes however, few expect that the Iraqi military is likely to undertake such action. Many analysts claim that the Iraqi regime is, in fact coup-proof. Saddam Hussein 's staying power should cause any similarly-led U.S. coalition to rethink not just the possibilities of both coups and coup-proofing, but how it would fight and defeat a coup-proof regime."

These are the opening words of the paper. In the introduction, Quinlivan develops the idea that certain states - particularly mentioned are Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia - have sacrificed blunt military power for a kind of internal regulation secured through special loyalties, parallel military organizations and multiple, overlapping internal security agencies.

"Conflict between the United States and either Iraq or Syria, however, pits a superpower with a short attention span against regimes that have accepted serious constraints on their ability to exercise their full military potential."

The emphasis on "accepted" is mine because it would be easy to miss the point of this statement. Quinlivan isn't pointing out the (obvious) fact that these regimes have little military power, he's asserting they have have a different kind of power altogether. This difference has consequences:

"If a US-led coalition decides that it wants to overthrow a coup-proofed regime through military action, it will have to devote serious attention to the regime's true underpinnings. Field commanders will need more extensive means of understanding their opponent's political-military situation and greater insight into the coalition's political intentions. Moreover, the coordination of political-military operations will require greater political involvement in the direction of ground operations than both military and political authorities have come to expect."

Sounding familiar yet? Quinlivan is asserting that military power is only part of the equation in these regimes , which are largely based on less tangible political and social power. It's all very well fighting and defeating the military, but you need a plan to deal with the politics as well. Otherwise, well, there may be consequences.

That's the introduction over. So what is coup-proofing? The essence of a coup is described as the seizure of a state by a small group within the state apparatus. Coup-proofing then is the organization of the state in such a way that the possibility of a small group or military operation being able to leverage control is made remote. How is this implemented in practice? Quinlivan gives five features common to coup-proofed states:

"...including: (1) the effective exploitation of family, ethnic and religious loyalties for coup-critical positions balanced with wider participation and less restrictive loyalty standards for the regime as a whole; (2) the creation of an armed force parallel to the regular military (3) the development of multiple internal security agencies with overlapping jurisdiction, that constantly monitor the loyalty of the military and one another with independent paths of communication to critical leaders; (4) the fostering of expertness in the regular military; and (5) the financing of such measures."

As Quinlivan points out, the demonstration of the use of these methods comes in the survival of Saudi, Iraqi and Syrian regimes in spite of external threats, military defeats and internal tensions, which is particular remarkable considering the regularity with which coups took place prior to those regimes.

The real key is the size of the loyal community. Saddam was a Tikriti leader and a Sunni, giving him the loyalty of some 20% of Iraq's population, and the extreme loyalty of about 0.1%. These percentages gave him a loyal base with which to staff the key government positions with Tikritis, and create larger scale police forces from the Sunni population - 20 police for every 1000 population being more than enough to police even a particularly unstable state. Larger minorities are kept on-board, those unwilling to cooperate can be brutally suppressed.

The army's function was massively distorted, creating a three-tier structure. The Iraqi regular army couldn't mount a coup without getting through the Republic Guard, and this body was in turn overseen by a Special Republican guard entrenched in Baghdad. The same policy of counter-balances was evident in the security services. In 1973, Saddam had one security chief - Nazim Kzar. From his power-base in Iraq's then sole security service he was able to mount a coup-attempt in 1973 that nearly succeeded.

"Since then, Iraqi security agencies have multiplied and are being constantly reshuffled and reshaped by the exigencies of the moment. Among the agencies with overlapping functions, the Military Security Service is an entirely independent agency. With a strength of 5,000, it can adequately provide agents for every formation and at every echelon within the military."

Hold that mental image in your head as you read the following.

"The larger security agencies usually have a uniformed component equipped with heavier weapons and transport to support cordon and search operations. These forces backstop the Police Mobile Strike Force and the regular police. In addition, the Popular Army has participated extensively in rear-area security tasks during wars and in internal security operations.2

Confused? You should be. Who's in control? Nobody and everyone. It's a complex network of guns and spies, all trained on each other, all ultimately run by loyalists. Syria is given as an example with 17 different security agencies, and a similar number existed in Iraq. Imagine being a whistle-blower in that environment. Quinlivan goes on to describe what kind of people sign up to this life:

"The security agencies offer a path of upward mobility for many of the more ambitious and ruthless members of Iraqi society. Traditional blandishments of rapid promotion, high pay, and special privileges can attract and motivate those who are not particularly squeamish.2

Add to this picture a wide network of informants, and you can quickly begin to understand why these regimes are not going to be toppled easily from the inside - the choices for an Iraqi citizen here are stark. Of course, all of this needs to be paid for. After the Gulf War Iraq was supposedly crippled by sanctions. Was it? We all know that Iraq's revenue was guaranteed by oil, but the clever part was how it was being spent.

"...with sufficiently opaque financial transactions, an oil-rich state can free itself from public knowledge of how much money it has raised externally and how the money is distributed internally. The importance of money extends beyond the ability to buy weapons for parallel militaries and to provide their members superior pay and benefits. The sustained expenditure of money over time creates a kind of politics with a certain stability that goes unnoticed by outsiders. The 'wholesale' operation of this politics is expressed in the creation of subsidies and entitlements that bind entire groups to regime. For example, long before the discovery of oil, Ibn Saud rewarded loyal tribes with gold and rifles."

So we can picture a coup-proofed state such as Iraq as a tightly interwoven connection of loyalties, incentives, checks, balances and, well, disincentives. Sanctions? Who cares - limiting medical supplies or even food for the general population was never going to have any significant effect on the core people that really mattered to the regime's stability. All that sanctions were doing, was killing people.

All this internal security comes at the expense of regular military power though, for the simple reason that if the army is too strong, it would be able to mount a coup. Military power is deliberately sacrificed for a different type of regulation.

Quinlivan goes on to describe the "coup-that-wasn't" after the original Gulf War before tackling a fascinating thought-experiment that has since been conducted in reality. Given all of the above, what would happen in a (from a 1999 perspective) hypothetical U.S. invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq?

"Any future war would necessarily be fought on entirely different military and political assumptions than those that guided the Gulf War effort. Any coalition supporting such a war would hold different beliefs on the regime's ability to survive simple military defeat. It is entirely possible that removal of the regime could be an avowed goal..."

Well, quite. How would we achieve this though?

"If removing the regime - without fragmenting the state - becomes the coalition's political objective, then its military force must be capable of directly engaging and removing the parallel military forces within the immediate vicinity of the capital and key population centers. It must also be capable of undermining the regime's political structure by providing a survivable exit strategy for key factions controlling the state apparatus. Both the assurance of devastating force and the guarantee of survival if certain conditions are met are necessary elements in undermining the political structures of the regime. Given the surfeit of destruction available from both foreign and domestic suppliers, an offer of survival is more likely to erode regime support than is the threat of destruction. The disorder, however, can come to an end only if the various elements can be brought in to support a new government."

Essentially, the destruction of the Iraqi military is a foregone conclusion, but that's not really the issue. The problem you have is that just simply wiping out the regime leads to a power vacuum and internal strife. By pushing the regime to the brink of destruction and then offering a "get-out" for them, you could engineer a situation that enables a more peaceful transfer of power.

"To help bring this process to a successful conclusion, the coalition must provide enough time for the process to work, protect the participants from the existing regime and other rivals, and provide an act of separation as the final outcome of the process. This act has to be something clearly visible to the United States, the opposing regime, the other groups in the society and - most important - all the members of the group seeking separation"

Quinlivan adds that by possessing the oil fields and the means of exporting oil, the coalition can promise that the new regime will soon possess the fiscal advantages of the old.

So the suggestion is clear - gain control over Iraqi resources (the oil-fields), demonstrate to the current regime that they will not survive any longer in the face of your overwhelming political and military weight, and then sit down at the table and negotiate a peaceful transition of power.

- - - - - - - - - -

Regardless of your opinions on the war, a decade on this paper is remarkable to read for both the insight it gives into the logic behind Saddam's regime, and the description it gives of the events that were to take place 4 years later.

The coalition plan to topple Saddam was big on military capabilities, but seemed to lack the political insight that could have led to a fast solution. While Iraq does seem to be gradually improving, nobody can seriously deny that over the last 5 years, post-war conditions have been appalling, with massive loss of life. Quinlivan's paper also explains why Iraq continues to suck in so much money - it is an entity held together by financial favours, and a continuous influx of money is required to make this system work.

So how would history look if instead of racing into Baghdad, we had progressed so far and then offered a get-out to the Baath regime in return for a more stable transition, according to Quinlivan's plan? I guess we'll never know for sure, but it's tempting to wonder...

[1] Quinlivan, J.T. (1999). Coup-Proofing: Its Practice and Consequences in the Middle East. International Security, 24(2), 131-165.