Why did the Nationalist government collapse? Chiang Kai-shek had a style of government that maximized his power by creating competing agencies which vied for power. Ultimately, nothing could get done without the personal attention of Chiang. He had little understanding of finance and simply demanded that banknotes be made available to pay for his military. The history of Chiang’s rise to power was impacted by the warlord era, which made the size of one’s army key. So he consistently rejected advice from foreign advisers to reduce the size of his military and improve conditions for soldiers. Low morale in the underpaid army led to defections. The collapse of the Chiang government reveals the perils of having too much authority in the hands of one individual.

Chapter 5 focuses on the 2011 uprisings. In the complex interplay of factors involved, armies have played a crucial role, either by keeping cohesive or by disappearing or by fracturing. When the Ben Ali system crumbled, the small Tunisian military revealed itself as the only institution keeping afloat, until other dynamics of civil society took back the upper hand in channeling political transition. The veiled and unspoken power of the armed forces in the Egyptian political system came back to open light and might. The Yemeni model of enduring authoritarian power was severely shaken by the uprising that also unleashed parallel power struggles. The 2011 transition revealed how crucial the Libyan army was, with its specificities, furthermore in a transition eased out by an eight-month civil war and international intervention. The use (and abuse) of the Syrian army was pushed further as it was pulled by the (Bashar al-Assad) regime into heavy-handed repression then full-scale civil war.