A lesson for America from Zimbabwe’s military coup

Most Americans don’t pay a lot of attention to Zimbabwe, the southern African country whose long period of authoritarian rule was interrupted by a military coup this week. They may faintly recognize the name Robert Mugabe, the country’s president who has ruled with a mix of populism and cruelty for the entirety of Zimbabwe’s 37 years of independence. They likely don’t know that Washington has enforced a sanctions regime against government officials, including Mugabe, since 2003, in response to their attacks against their own people.

But the events happening in the capital city of Harare today should remind all Americans why civilian leaders in a democracy should leave the military out of politics. Mugabe used Zimbabwe’s military as a domestic political tool from the start. The result of fusing the two major insurgent armies as part of the overall coalition governing structure, the military at independence embodied the uneasy distribution of political power. Mugabe almost immediately began building a force within a force that would be loyal to him and help him rout his domestic enemies. Over time, he purged the army of anyone disloyal to his political party. He then visited such purges on the country itself.

{mosads}His power secured through coercion, he became dependent on his armed allies. So long as the military benefited from the arrangement, they had no reason to change it. For decades, Mugabe balanced group interests in a way that appeased those he needed to defend his hold on power. But last week, when the 93-year-old president summarily dismissed his vice president in an effort to clear the path of succession for his wife, Mugabe apparently pushed the military beyond what it would tolerate. In a swift and bloodless coup, the military seized government buildings and the national media station, erected roadblocks around Harare, and seized government ministers and Mugabe himself. By Thursday, military leaders were engaged in negotiations with Mugabe over his fate and which civilians would succeed him.

Many Zimbabweans rejoiced to be rid of a capricious tyrant with no interest in true democratic rule. Perhaps the undemocratic manner of his removal at the hands of generals was not ideal. But something had to be done, and swiftly, to prevent another Mugabe from another 30 years of despotism. Of course, this sentiment was not universally shared in Zimbabwe. But the images of some citizens dancing in the streets at the news of Mugabe’s removal should give Americans pause. In 2015, a YouGov poll found that 70 percent of Americans think military officers “want what is best for the country,” while they believed politicians at the federal level put country before self only 17 percent of the time. The same poll found that almost 30 percent of Americans “could imagine a situation in which they would support the military seizing control of the federal government.”

That is precisely what just happened in Zimbabwe. The country’s military saw itself as the last resort guarantor of the country’s internal stability, based on its own judgment of which political actions might threaten that stability. So they seized control. In supporting Mugabe’s removal by the armed forces, actors inside and outside of Zimbabwe agree with the military’s right to play this oversight role. No serious analyst of American civil-military relations fears an actual military overthrow of the government, largely because the men and women of the armed forces have a professional commitment to remain apolitically subordinate to civilian control and to the Constitution which establishes that hierarchy.

But for civilian control to remain a norm, the commitment of civilians to this principle must be as ironclad as that of the military. The president’s tendency to assert and demand the personal political loyalty of those in uniform weakens executive reinforcement of this commitment. Washington wonks fret about the number of recently retired officers in positions of political power and the simultaneous demolition of the diplomatic and development bureaucracies. At the same time, most Americans acknowledge the expertise and patriotism resident in our active duty and retired military personnel. Both those who oppose and those who support the current presidential administration take comfort in the oversight of men who wear, or once wore, stars on their shoulders.

Despite very little opposition, Zimbabwe’s military seems to know it is in an unsustainable position and is working quickly to rid itself of the helm of state even as it denies that it staged a coup. It bears responsibility for its immediate actions, but perhaps not for the position it occupies in domestic Zimbabwean politics. Too many politicians wanted the military on their side, and now too many citizens and outside parties are willing to look the other way. Are we Zimbabwe? Not at all. But recent events in Zimbabwe provide a stark reminder that protecting the military from partisan politics protects democracy.

Alice Hunt Friend is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She was previously a principal director for African affairs in the office of the secretary of the U.S. Department of Defense.