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In a pioneering article of 1980, Stanislav Andreski maintained that sociology can contribute to the study of international relations by showing how military situations are explained by some aspects of society. He added that the more intensively armed forces are involved in war, the less they become tools of internal repression. Since then, however, sociology has devoted little attention to the connection between two phenomena that bear enormous political significance. This article explores a type of praetorian thrust that is inversely linked not to civilianism but to militarism. The theoretical scheme presented in this paper, of a unique type of praetorian tendency, is based mainly on a comparison between the case of contemporary Israel and historical France, but also utilizing other historical cases, in order to answer the question, is a military coup possible in Israel? The common denominator of the two cases, French Algeria and Israel, which lends this article its sociological importance, is that under certain circumstances, armed forces may develop an actual or potential praetorian orientation even though the country in question is not backward and has a democratic regime.

This article focuses on the combined consequences for women of militarization and pan-Islamism—a particular manifestation of Islam that has spread using some of the mechanisms of globalization, especially global trade and global communications. The empirical data are drawn from the civil conflict of the 1990s in Algeria, where an Islamist movement led by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and several armed Islamist groups (notably the GIA, the Armed Islamic Group) terrorized the population and killed tens of thousands of people in an attempt to seize control of the state. External support from pan-Islamists accounts, in part, for the ability of the FIS and the GIA to gain a foothold in Algeria. The pan-Islamist movement has cells in Europe and the Middle East, some of which were in contact with Algerian Islamists. Armed Islamist groups from Algeria received training from Al Qaeda, combat experience in Afghanistan and Bosnia, and financial support from Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Iran. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]