The other day I was listening to NPR and the host was interviewing a high ranking military officer who was involved in the first Gulf War. This officer said that the U.S. Military overestimated the capabilities of the men serving in the Iraqi army even though the Israelis told them they had nothing to worry about. i.e. The U.S. Army was geared to fight soldiers trained by the Soviet Union using Soviet equipment and what they got was an incompetent army using Soviet equipment.
Is there something about the Middle East that makes them poor soldiers in the modern world? I certainly don’t question their intelligence, their courage, or even their long history of military competence. The Ottoman Empire didn’t spread out by using pillow fights against their neighbors after all. The Israeli’s have certainly demonstrated over the years how ineffective their neighbor’s military forces are. Am I missing something here? There’s a technology gap but is there anything else?
I’m sure one factor is that the culture in the ME is more one of warriors than soldiers, but my guess is that it’s simply training, or the lack there of that makes many of the ME armies ineffective and, in some cases, nearly comical. They simply didn’t and still don’t have the traditions of training to fight the types of organized wars that the Euro’s specialized in (and later us misbegotten Yanks, as the tradition of organized slaughters propagated to us).
Of course, as it turned out, the Soviet equipment itself was seriously flawed (in a nut shell, it sucked), and even the vaulted Soviets themselves had serious issues with training and moral, at least by the end of their little empire.
I don’t think anyone realized just how much better the Wests training and equipment was to that of the Soviets, let alone to Iraq, who used the Soviet model for tactics and used their equipment, at least not until after the first Gulf War. We had seen the Iraqi’s slug it out with Iran earlier, and that ended in a very bloody shambles all around, but it was hard to judge what that meant, quantitatively, against Western forces using Western tactics, highly trained personnel, and the much better Western equipment.
Training. Logistics. A tradition and mindset of having an army of soldiers, instead of an army of warriors. Probably some other things I can’t think of just now as well.
Saddam Hussein might have worried about letting his military become very competent. A strong officer corps, and well trained army would have been a threat to him. That may have been a factor. He also could not afford to maintain a lot of the equipment he had purchased from the Soviets. Many of his tanks and other military vehicles had been stripped for parts. He wanted the rest of the world to think he had greater capability, so he would count the disabled vehicles in described his army. Our own assessments of foreign military capacity tend to be inflated for both caution, and political purposes.
At the time of the first Gulf War, the Iraqi Army was estimated to have more than half a million men on paper, making it one of the largest armies in the world at the time (though still well below the US and then-Soviet Union). Another factor, besides equipment, was that Iraq had been engaged in nearly a decade of war with Iran. While the Iraqi Army did not distinguish itself overall, it did have more combat experience than a significant portion of US forces at the time who hadn’t been in Vietnam.
This infamous article discusses the issue somewhat. The author seems to think it boils down to the culture within Arab militaries, specifically the emphasis on rote memorization in training instead of critical thinking and the corresponding lack of small unit leadership that can be provided utilizing the critical thinking of junior officers and senior NCOs to shape an army’s tactics.
Aren’t the Israeli and Turkish militaries in the Middle East? They are #11 and 10, respectively, according to globalfirepower.com (I have no clue how respected a source this is). Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia are all in the top 30, but I have no idea what this site ranked Iraq as in 2003.
The key factor is that according to this site, our defense budget is 9-10x the next largest spenders:
For some perspective, I was born in 1974. Almost all of my political memories are of Reagan, Bush and Bush governments that emphasized military power. We were in a war from 1945-1992 that required buildup but no direct fighting. Despite the end of the Cold War, we are still an economic powerhouse devoted to massive military build-up because everything from China to Venezuela is considered a mortal threat.
Although a bit disorganbized, what that last paragraph is meant to demonstrate is that we are a country that doesn’t have just a soldier mentality but more of a soldier fetishist mentality. When almost any single army without nukes faces our army, it doesn’t matter what their training is, is doesn’t matter whether they have a soldier or warrior mentality or whatever, it doesn’t matter at all because we have well-trained soldiers (I doubt they are significantly better trained than most of the world’s major armies - that part is cheap) with technology most armies of the world can only dream of.
Asking the question of why Middle Eastern armies seem so incompetent (and you are really going off only one army and don’t forget you were sucking off the tit of propaganda while you read news stories about the badass Iraqi military) is like asking why is most of America so pathetic at earning money while using your standard to be Bill Gates.
Another thing you can get from that ranking is that all the top military powers have huge economies, large populations and are the developers of military and most other kinds of technology. The rest of the pack are their allies. Possibly the only exception in the top 20 might be Iran and North Korea.
There are many reasons why most arab/ME armies are of low quality; here are a few:
-most soldiers are conscripts-with low educational standards and low motivation
-the officers are usually politically connected; the most competent officers are not promoted (they might become a threat to the regime)
-corruption. This is why spare parts are often missing…and a $2,000,000 tank is junk-for want of spare parts.
-overall addiction to braggadocio and posturing-think of Nasser’s boasts that his armies would toss the Zionists into the sea-instead he got clobbered (woke up to find his airforce reduced to burning junk)
-using equipment not suitable for the terrain (Iraqi tanks crews died from heat exhaustion-because their Russian-built tanks had no air conditioning.
An instructive example is that of the Egyptian armies, trapped in the Sinai Desert (in the 1967 war): the troops surrendered en masse because nobody had thought to provide them with adequate drinking water! The Israelis had analyzed the problem, and learned that in a desert environment, a soldier needs 5-6 quarts of water a day-they ran fleets of tanker trucks to the front, to supply their troops. So, brainpower won over brute force (as it usually does). Being smarter and having well trained, motivated officers counts for a lot.
It isn’t really fair to conpare the Iraqi military with the US. The US military is the best in the world, thus it was (in the first Gulf War) a twentieth-century army fighting in a twenty-first century war. The US command and control, guided missiles, tank-killer planes, anti-radar Stealth bombers vs. Korean War era Iraqi tanks and planes. No wonder it was a turkey shoot.
That’s why the Israelis kick ass and take names when they have to. Same for the US. Nothing to do with Arab culture.
Not quite Korean war era. The Iraqis had antiquated aircraft, mainly MiG-25s, Su-25s, and, to a lesser extent, MiG-29s, but the planes’ designs aren’t that much older than those of the A-10, F-16, or F-15. The MiG-29 entered service in the 1980s, which meant its design was newer than any US planes involved in the first Gulf War except for the F-117. As for tanks, the Iraqi’s main battle tank in both the first Gulf War and the 2003 invasion was the Asad Babil tank, which reportedly at least knocked out a few Abrams M1 tanks as well as several more M2 Bradleys.
Remember Stalin said, “Quantity has a quality all its own.”
Soviet doctrine relied on capable equipment and lots and lots of numbers. Western militaries could not match the numbers so focused on better equipment and training. Who would have prevailed in a Soviet push into western Europe is anyone’s guess.
Indeed the Allies in WWII used the numbers doctrine when it came to tanks. The Sherman was woefully outmatched by German tanks. However, there were a metric crapload of Shermans being churned out. What they lacked in ability they made up for in numbers.
Now, if you do not have the numbers and do not have the best equipment you are pretty screwed. At that point only stellar tactics/strategy will help you and Hussein (like Stalin before him) was wary of a strong office corps and so gutted the best and the brightest. This hurt Stalin/Soviets early in WWII badly and it hurt Hussein. Although even if Hussein had a good generals it is not like the US had bad ones…Stormin Norman was a pretty sharp guy.
I’d say that, based on what we now know about Soviet hardware, especially things like the T-62 and T-72, had the Soviets come into Western Europe they would have had their asses handed to them. I agree that quantity can be important, but even with Soviets at the helm their losses would have been staggering. We just didn’t know HOW over-matched they were until we saw, first hand, what their equipment could and couldn’t do when put up against our own.
That’s true, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Certainly the US and the Soviets between them built a lot of tanks, and basically overwhemed Germany, but Germany built very few really good tanks. IIRC, they had less than 1500 of the Tiger I’s, and less than 5 hundred of the Tiger II’s…and something like 2-3k of the Panzer V’s. The rest of their tanks were not all that much better than what the Soviets had, and even the Sherman was a match for things like the Panzer III’s and IV’s (and the late war designs coming out of the US and by the Brits were a match for the Panzer V’s). In contrast that the Soviets produced 40k+ of the T-34 variants, and the US produced something like 50k+ of the various Sherman variants. That’s two orders of magnitude differences.
Contrast that to the cold war era. The US and it’s allies might have been outnumbered something like 2 or maybe even 3 to 1 (and we would have been on the defensive). Our qualitative advantage more than outmatched their quantitative one, and that leave aside the fact that our troops were better trained and supported.
In any case, I think the answer to the OP was that the we really didn’t have any idea just how good our equipment and training was beside what the Iraqi’s had until the war started. I think we (the US and allies) were CONFIDENT we would win, but I think the ease with which it happened came as something of a surprise. You always plan on the worst case, since you don’t want to underestimate the enemy.
I also think that TriPolar’s comment about Saddam not wanting to let his military (and especially it’s officers) get TOO competent, while also wanting everyone in the area to THINK he had an extremely competent military (contrary to the evidence based on the war between Iraq and Iran) is a good one.
Something you gotta remember about the Gulf War ground campaign is that the Coalition had total air supremacy and bombed the shit out of Iraqi positions for a month before anyone besides special ops guys moved forward on the ground. It wasnt just the superiority of ground forces that led to the lopsided outcome - the Iraqi C&C and logistics had been annihilated before the Abrams even started rolling. Of course it was lopsided. Youre not getting an accurate look at how Soviet tanks match up against Western tanks there. You`re getting a look at how a Western combined arms force with total air supremacy matches up against isolated and cut off ground forces.
I think it is hard to say. The Soviets lost how many in WWII? 10 million soldiers IIRC? They were still going strong and all the rest of the allies put together came nowhere near such staggering losses.
In Korea when the Chinese poured across the border I recall reading (sorry no cite…I have looked for it and cannot find it) that the US unleashed one of the largest artillery barrages in history at their initial push. They were annihilating the Chinese wholesale. They kept coming and overwhelmed US forces eventually coming very close to pushing the US off the peninsula entirely. The Chinese took staggering losses…didn’t matter.
Numbers can count for a lot if you’ve got them and if the country fielding them is willing to toss them into the meat grinder to achieve victory (the US is not but obviously some countries are happy to do that).
I’m rather surprised that we’ve had so much yappery about “Middle eastern Culture” and such and not a concentration on the simple fact that it’s the economy, stupid.
Western countries have extremely high quality armies because they can afford to, and have been able to afford to for decades and decades. They have the resources to not only equip their soldiers well, but to have their soldiers spend the great majority of their time training in realistic, scientifically proven manners.
In a First World Economy you not only have lots of money to pour into high quality soldiers, but - because of political and economic pressures - you don’t have any many soldiers per capita as a little country like Iraq does, further allowing for selection of better soldiers and emphasis on training them. At the time of the first Gulf War, the ratio of soldiers to civilians in Iraq was (more or less) about one soldier fro every 25 civilians; in the USA, it one a soldier for every 150 civilians. The U.S, though, still had a much larger armed forces.
You just can’t take one country that can spend 20-40 times as much on developing military capability PER SOLDIER as another clountry’s army, match them up, and expect any different a result.
A full blown war in Europe would have gone nuclear, likely in less than a week, so frankly it doesn’t much matter. But a 3 to 1 ratio is, I suspect, an exaggeration; the Warsaw Pact’s quantitative advantage was much overblown for PR effect.
Not sure how you would quantify it but culture certainly has an effect.
The Japanese culture led to numerous cases in WWII of them fighting to the last man…nearly literally. US forces never did that barring no other choice.
I do not doubt that there can be an affect on the soldiers if they think dying in a holy war is noble. A US soldier may find death in battle noble (possibly) but will fight tooth-and-nail to stay alive.
Granted that is broad brush stuff and as I said I am not sure how you would quantify it but I do believe culture can certainly affect how your soldiers go about fighting.
Retort:
(1) Whaddabout oil money?
(2) Whaddabout Israel? Seems to me to have all the same disadvantages as its ME neighbors, and no oil money either (substantial US aid, granted, but was even that the case in 1967/1973?)
If you look at Iran v Iraq you can find some intense battles. Iran did exactly what China did in Korea. Iran used children (around 12) and used them as human waves. They ran in first and the Iraqis mowed them down, but this sacrifice of kid warriors kept comming.
This technique almost worked till Iraq miminized the problem by using chemicals.
Israel exists today not because it’s so superior in weapons. It exists because the Arabs are not nearly united as they say they are. Arabs don’t like each other. And what’s worse is Arabs in their own countries don’t like each other.
Remember during the Israeli Wars there were always low level Israeli-Jordani dialog. Isreal is great for Jordan as it keeps Syria busy. If Israel wasn’t there, Syria might get ideas. Israel is great for Egypt. It keeps the groups in Egypt focused outward instead of inward.
The Gulf States of Arabia have quality of education. In Saudi Arabia and the UAE around 90 pecent of college degrees are in Islamic Studies of one or another. This is a WASTE. Saudi Arabia has enough manpower to educate their own populations to run Saudi industries. Yet the still need to import brain power because the type of education is lacking. Not the will to be educated.
So why don’t the Arab Gulf states refocus: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Think about this, after the Arab Gulf, which group of Arabs is the most educated? The Palastinians that’s who.