Why no military coup in India and Israel during Cold War?

A lot of countries suffered from military coups but India and Israel didn't get any despite both having tumultuous political periods and heavy corruption. What factors contributed to this?
 
A lot of countries suffered from military coups but India and Israel didn't get any despite both having tumultuous political periods and heavy corruption. What factors contributed to this?

I don't know about India but Israel was surrounded by enemies who wanted to invade them and destroy them as a country, in that kind of enviroment you do not want to weaken your country too much with infighting.
 
India's army is multi ethnic and has been structured differently since the 1940s to keep a coup from happening. That is not to say a coup is impossible in India, just unlikely. This article explains it pretty well.

Dunno about Israel.
 
On India:

"Upon first sight, India has an effective defence policy management system. Unlike many postcolonial developing countries, India has seen no military coups. Nor have there been quiet aggregations of political authority to the military that allow it to determine the political agenda and reduce the flexibility of civilian leaders. Civilian control is firmly established throughout the Indian defence system, with final decisions of war and peace being made by elected civilians, and then, directed through multiple layers of civilian bureaucracy to reach their military recipients. Compared to the opaque fusion of political and military authorities in China, and the transparent dominance of the military over ostensibly civilian-led foreign and security policymaking in Pakistan - to give two nearby examples - India's defence setup appears a model of stability in civil-military relations that accurately reflects its democratic constitution.

"The existence of this system in India's regional context is all the more remarkable for its durability. The national security apparatus was devised by Lords lsmay and Mountbatten in 1947, at the request of India's founding prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. In the violent context of Partition, their priority was to ensure survival of the civilian polity at the apex of defence decision-making. This logic still animates and explains the defence system today, which is still that of Ismay and Mountbatten, with a few minor embellishments on its periphery. The central principles of the system are its establishment of checks and balances *within* the military, with no overall coordinating military figure along the lines of the Chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and, by contrast, a unified civilian bureaucracy reporting to the prime minister, who also enjoys ultimate control over the military. This absence of checks and balances within the civilian realm, compared with its status as the organising principle of the military apparatus, ensures a dominance of the civilian over the military to the extent that that it has led analysts to characterise Indian civil-military relations as an 'absent dialogue' (Multherjee 2009).

"The system initially appears durable, due to its absence of military coups and the ability of civil and military leaders to organise effective responses to all manner of subconventional and conventional military provocations. However, a closer investigation of its operation reveals certain dysfunctions flowing from its design, which are growing in their visibility and effects on Indian defence policy. These primarily include: the absence of a military Chief of Defence Staff to reconcile inter-service rivalry; a paucity of long-term strategic planning to set political objectives and prioritise resources in light of these; an overweighting of civilian bureaucracy in the policy-making process, distancing military expertise from policy considerations and replacing it with generalist civilian non-experts; and excessive classification of defence information, hindering the development of societal expertise on foreign and security policy matters..."

https://books.google.com/books?id=iBG4CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT378

As for Israel, I think part of the reason is that the European Jews who founded it detested the idea of military coups, which they associated with fascism (and often anti-Semitism). In any event, part of Israel's self-image is that it is the "only democracy" in the Middle East (though of course a lot more democratic for Jews than for Arabs...) and military coups would go against that and would be destabilizing in a way Israel could not afford.
 
A lot of countries suffered from military coups but India and Israel didn't get any despite both having tumultuous political periods and heavy corruption. What factors contributed to this?
Adding to what others said, such a coup even if successful, would not be able to effectively govern India. Indian Military is dominated by the Sikh, Nepalese (Gurkha) and Rajput minorites of India. No Maratha or Bengali would like being governed by some Gurkha in Delhi, and as such the Coup's control could not extend beyond Northwest India and Delhi. Infact, Nehru kept the military of minorites for exactly this reason.
 
Indian army being coup-proof seems too convenient. Usually, there's large amount of give or take involved: you can have loyal army, or efficient army. That's why a lot of countries purposefully keep their army staffed with incompetent crooked generals, so no soldier would be willing to follow them during coup: why risk your life for a general who's as much crooked scoundrel as your civilian leaders?
So, does structuring of Indian army gives it some particular weaknesses?

Adding to what others said, such a coup even if successful, would not be able to effectively govern India. Indian Military is dominated by the Sikh, Nepalese (Gurkha) and Rajput minorites of India. No Maratha or Bengali would like being governed by some Gurkha in Delhi, and as such the Coup's control could not extend beyond Northwest India and Delhi. Infact, Nehru kept the military of minorites for exactly this reason.
Define "effectively govern".
Do taxes stop being collected, teachers and nurses are no longer paid, roads aren't being maintained?
If armed forces are sufficiently united that there is no civil war in immediate aftermath of coup, of course junta is going to govern whole India.
 

Pangur

Donor
Indian army being coup-proof seems too convenient. Usually, there's large amount of give or take involved: you can have loyal army, or efficient army. That's why a lot of countries purposefully keep their army staffed with incompetent crooked generals, so no soldier would be willing to follow them during coup: why risk your life for a general who's as much crooked scoundrel as your civilian leaders?
So, does structuring of Indian army gives it some particular weaknesses?
would you make the same statement about say the US or British army?
 
would you make the same statement about say the US or British army
Yeah.
American: they have enough hardware and money thrown at their armed forces, to offset most leadership inadequacies, but still couldn't beat some backward fanatics for years. US fights ISIS longer than they did WWII.
British: they have less tanks than Serbia, they have a carrier without CAG. British armed forces are joke.
 
First, Israel considered itself a first world nation in which a coup would be unthinkable. Second, Israel's military, being conscript-based, isn't going to be skewed towards one political faction. If there was a coup, the legitimate government would enjoy broad support, resulting in a civil war. Finally, Israeli political instability would probably bring down any government that didn't have broad support.
 
Indian army being coup-proof seems too convenient. Usually, there's large amount of give or take involved: you can have loyal army, or efficient army. That's why a lot of countries purposefully keep their army staffed with incompetent crooked generals, so no soldier would be willing to follow them during coup: why risk your life for a general who's as much crooked scoundrel as your civilian leaders?
So, does structuring of Indian army gives it some particular weaknesses?


Define "effectively govern".
Do taxes stop being collected, teachers and nurses are no longer paid, roads aren't being maintained?
If armed forces are sufficiently united that there is no civil war in immediate aftermath of coup, of course junta is going to govern whole India.
No. India is a federal country, the states would bow down to popular pressure. To do otherwise means political suicide. Now, the coup leaders might ask, You and which army? To which, the states would answer IAS , the effective permanent bureaucracy of India, and while some officers would collaborate with the military, the vast majority would likely interfere in administration (as they did during the emergency) and without them the links of governance would break down (meaning, yes, stopping of taxes being collected and roads being maintained). Also, in the medium term popular support is important for government control and rule of law (or should I say army?).
 

Ak-84

Banned
First, Israel considered itself a first world nation in which a coup would be unthinkable. Second, Israel's military, being conscript-based, isn't going to be skewed towards one political faction. If there was a coup, the legitimate government would enjoy broad support, resulting in a civil war. Finally, Israeli political instability would probably bring down any government that didn't have broad support.
So did Pakistan until 1958. Even then the first Coup was only one technically speaking, the imposition of Martial law was announced by the properly elected President on his own initaive. He was then removed by the rest of the Cabinet, who felt that he was the source of the problem and replaced by the Defence Minister; who resigned as Army Chief the same day. And as at pains to avoid being seen as a Coup maker. Later ones dispensed with this fiction. Point is; the unthinkable only has to happen once and can occur in stages as people become more and more used to the idea.

As for India, it was a one party state until the late 80's. The Congress party was too strong to permit a coup and the at any given time the Indian Military was too busy fighting Rebellion No 23.

You see it with Pakistan now, since the last 12-15 years, the country regularly has had situations which in the past would have led to a Coup, and now.........has the military chiefs telling everyone they support the democratic process and they'd better figure things out.
 
meaning, yes, stopping of taxes being collected and roads being maintained
So, IAS would "punish" junta by effectively setting fire to their own local provinces? Okay...
"Lets make sure nothing works here in Bengal! That'll show those jerks in Delhi!"
 
About Israel: couldn't another factor be that several former generals went on to high political offices and therefore the IDF feeling it was already well represented in the cabinet?
 
Yeah.
American: they have enough hardware and money thrown at their armed forces, to offset most leadership inadequacies, but still couldn't beat some backward fanatics for years. US fights ISIS longer than they did WWII.
British: they have less tanks than Serbia, they have a carrier without CAG. British armed forces are joke.

Are you being serious or is this satire
 

CalBear

Moderator
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Well there is the whole "you can actually vote in a free and fair election" thing. The reason you get military coups is, in general, two-fold. First is when you remove any barrier between the Civilian and Military chains of command and/or train your army to be a regime protection force that is the only thing standing between the people and a change in leadership, in that case, you regularly will get a field grade office who decides he can do a better job than the fools he's protecting. The second issue is when you have a long term dictatorship that pretends not to be (Zimbabwe is an imperfect example, since it also leans heavily on the first scenario) with sham voting that miraculously always has the current leader getting 90% of the vote or some other unrealistic number, eventually the military will decide that it is time to make a change. Unfortunately, the number of times the military is willing to release the reins once the de facto dictator is removed is very small.

Neither of these scenarios applies to either India or Israel (nor does the third, fairly rare, instance where a military is effectively required to act under national law if the civilian authority begins to assume dictatorial powers of some kind). What you have in both countries is a very strong tradition of civilian control accompanied by the genuine belief and confidence of the people that they do control what party/parties lead the country through the ballot box.
 
Yeah.
American: they have enough hardware and money thrown at their armed forces, to offset most leadership inadequacies, but still couldn't beat some backward fanatics for years. US fights ISIS longer than they did WWII.

This is ridiculous. The reason it took so long to defeat ISIS is simply that the US decided that no large numbers of US troops would be used unless necessary. *Of course* if the US had been willing to use large numbers of its troops as in World War II, Fallujah, Mosul, etc. would have been reclaimed from ISIS as soon as it took them in 2014 rather than in 2016-17.
 
Are you being serious or is this satire
What there is to satirise? It's common knowledge that most armies nowadays are completely useless, and exist only out of historical inertia.
US armed forces are a bit of paper tiger, and get away with a lot of personal and structural incompetence, because they have very expensive ordinance like cruise missiles, drones, and aircraft carriers, which allow them to bomb people without any risk of retaliation.
But that's only against small countries like Serbia, Libya, or Syria. Russians and Chinese have anti-ship ballistic missiles that'd negate US Navy carriers (stay in home waters or get sinked), and anti-air mobile batteries that'd prevent US Airforce establishing uncontested air superiority (stay close to bases or get shot down).
Americans don't know how to fight wars without uncontested air superiority and being able to bomb with impunity.
This is ridiculous. The reason it took so long to defeat ISIS is simply that the US decided that no large numbers of US troops would be used unless necessary. *Of course* if the US had been willing to use large numbers of its troops as in World War II, Fallujah, Mosul, etc. would have been reclaimed from ISIS as soon as it took them in 2014 rather than in 2016-17.
It took them so long, because US fights ISIS and Assad at the same time, while supporting "moderate opposition", members of which constantly defected to ISIS alongside with equipment that Americans gave them.
 
What there is to satirise? It's common knowledge that most armies nowadays are completely useless, and exist only out of historical inertia.
US armed forces are a bit of paper tiger, and get away with a lot of personal and structural incompetence, because they have very expensive ordinance like cruise missiles, drones, and aircraft carriers, which allow them to bomb people without any risk of retaliation.
But that's only against small countries like Serbia, Libya, or Syria. Russians and Chinese have anti-ship ballistic missiles that'd negate US Navy carriers (stay in home waters or get sinked), and anti-air mobile batteries that'd prevent US Airforce establishing uncontested air superiority (stay close to bases or get shot down).
Americans don't know how to fight wars without uncontested air superiority and being able to bomb with impunity.

It took them so long, because US fights ISIS and Assad at the same time, while supporting "moderate opposition", members of which constantly defected to ISIS alongside with equipment that Americans gave them.
I'm very doubtful the USAF planned on having un contested air superiority in the event of having to fly SIOP missions against the Soviet Union. I suspect the same holds true to this day vis a vis potential strategic missions and Russia.
 
I'm very doubtful the USAF planned on having un contested air superiority in the event of having to fly SIOP missions against the Soviet Union.
Army conceived to fight world war III and army conceived to do occasional peace-keeping missions after democratic end of history occurred in 1991, were two very different types of animal.
 
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