Amos Perlmutter, 1931-2001

Amos was born in Bialystock, Poland, on 14 September 1931. His parentsmoved to what was then Palestine shortly after his birth, and he was raisedin Tel Aviv. He was a member of what Israelis called the '12th-gradegeneration' - those who were in the 12th grade when the State of Israel wascreated in May 1948, and who were conscripted into the young IsraelDefense Forces (IDF) before they graduated from high school to fight in the1948-49 War of Independence.

Amos came to the United States shortly after the war to pursue hiseducation, and received his BA, MA, and PhD from the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley. He returned to Israel in the late 1950s and, amongother academic and policy-related positions, worked for a while for theIsraeli Atomic Energy Commission. He also served as a member of Israel'sdelegation to the United Nations and as a political advisor to the chief ofstaff and high command of the IDF.

Amos returned to the United States in the mid-1960s, and in 1968became a US citizen. From 1972 he was on the faculty of the School ofGovernment at the American University in Washington, DC Amos issurvived by his wife, Sharon Watts Perlmutter, of Washington, DC; and hismother, Berta Perlmutter, and sister, Elazara Hason, both of Israel.

Amos's scholarly writings addressed issues of comparative politics, civil-military relations, politics of modernization, authoritarianism, andinternational politics. His areas of expertise included the Middle East, thePersian Gulf, and North Africa. Among Amos's lasting contributions to bothscholarship and policy was his courageous challenge to the orthodoxieswhich, in the 1960s and 1970s, dominated the study of civil-military relationsand of the developing world. These orthodoxies, to which leading academicsand policymakers subscribed, emphasized the modernizing role of themilitary in Third World societies. The military, it was argued, was the mostrational, organized, and powerful institution in these societies, and by seizingpower from corrupt and ineffective monarchies (as it did, for example, inEgypt in 1952 and in Iraq in 1958), the military would bring to the political,social, and economic life of a society the same degree of rationality,meritocratic procedures, effective organization, and efficiency with which itconducted its own affairs. In short, the military would be the agent ofmodernization - in otherwise traditional, corrupt, and dysfunctional societies.

Amos vigorously and persuasively challenged this view, which heconsidered naive and ill-informed. His argument had three layers.

First, the role the military plays in society very much depends on theculture, norms, structures, and traditions of the specific society in question.He showed that whether or not the military takes political power in acountry depends on the proclivity of that country to have a military activein the society's political life; thus, there are societies in which the militarynever intervenes in politics, and societies in which such interventions arefrequent.

Second, in those societies in which the military frequently intervenes inpolitics, the motives for such interventions vary; at times the militaryintervenes in order to preserve the status quo, and at other times it intervenesin the name of revolution or reform.

Third, the military itself, regardless of the slogans its leaders use forpublic consumption, has corporate interests which are not identifiable withthe interests of any specific class, or with any specific agenda -modernizing or not. This situation, in which the palace guard takes over thepalace (that is, the state), was defined by Samuel Huntington as'praetorianism'.

Amos developed his own critique of development theory and the notionof the military as an agent of modernization into a theory of praetoriansocieties — societies in which military intervention in politics is the norm,not the exception. In such societies, military intervention does not represent'progress' and the military is not an agent of modernity. Amos's analysis mynot appear so startling today, but when he developed it, he was defying theprevailing convention and raising questions about the work of the mostinfluential scholars in the field. His arguments did little to endear him to thepowers that be. (On Amos's scholarly contribution, see Gabriel Ben-Dor,'The Restless Mind In Its Element: The Study of Civil-Military Relationsand the Analysis of Politics in Israel', in A Restless Mind: Essays in Honorof Amos Perlmutter, ed. Benjamin Frankel [London and Portland, OR:Frank Cass, 1996]).

Beyond his scholarly pursuit, Amos was an energetic participant in thepublic debate on current issues as an analyst, commentator, and writer. Hewas a prolific writer indeed, contributing articles for the op-ed pages ofleading newspapers; essays; book reviews; and letters to the editor. One didnot always agree with Amos, but one could always rely on him to beprovocative (the Palestinian-leaning Palestine Media Watch picked Amos as'The most inflamatory columnist' of 2000 for his columns on the MiddleEast). Amos's last column, penned from his hospital bed and entitled'Arafat's Failed Utopia', appeared in the Jerusalem Post on 8 June 2001,four days before he died.

Amos was also a scholarly entrepreneur. He cofounded two journals -The Journal of Strategic Studies (of which he was coeditor when he died),

and Security Studies, of which he served as coeditor for six years. He wasinstrumental in the creation of several other academic journals.

Amos wrote 15 books. Among them Making the World Safe forDemocracy: A Century of Wilsonianism and Its Totalitarian Challengers(1997); FDR & Stalin: A Not So Grand Alliance, 1943-1945 (1993); TheLife and Times of Menachem Begin (1987); Israel, the Partitioned State: APolitical History since 1900 (1985); Two Minutes over Baghdad (1982; withMichael Handel and Uri Bar-Joseph); Modern Authoritarianism: AComparative Institutional Analysis (1981); Political Roles and MilitaryRulers (1981); Politics and the Military in Israel 1967-1977 (1978); TheMilitary and Politics in Modern Times: On Professionals, Praetorians, andRevolutionary Soldiers (1977); Egypt, the Praetorian State (1974); andMilitary and Politics in Israel: Nation-Building and Role Expansion (1969).

Amos was what we would call a 'character' - sui generis, a category ofone. Those who knew Amos recognized in him a certain insatiable quality- a hunger that would not be quenched. He was a man of big appetite. Noone ever accused him of timidity, or meekness, or reticence. On the contrary- there was a passion in him, a contagious vitality. Everything he did, he didwith gusto. He may not have always been disciplined, but he was alwaysenergetic and enthusiastic.

His passion for books, which he collected by the thousand, waslegendary. Six years ago Nicholas A. Basbanes wrote a book entitled AGentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion forBooks. He could have had Amos in mind, because Amos had an eternalpassion for books. He was deeply interested in, and knowledgeable about, asurprisingly wide range of topics. He loved travel, good food, and goodconversation. Yes, he could be opinionated and argumentative. Those whowere close to him, however, knew that he was always generous and warmand helpful. He was there when you needed him. He was a good friend tohis friends.

BENJAMIN FRANKELSecurity Studies