^
Er cite regards Saudi degrees?
Neither does an Abrams.
I remember a funny short story about a what-if Soviet invasion of Western Europe. NATO did a massive air drop of unbreakable plastic bottles on the advancing Soviet armor columns with labels reading, “A gift of vodka to our friends of the Warsaw Pact.” The offensive ground to a halt within days as the tankers got totally drunk.
This is Korean war era American propaganda. The Chinese absolutely did not do that in Korea. Since the Chinese army never at any point had any significant advantage in terms of manpower vis a vis the UN, “Human wave” attacks would have ended very badly for them. The American commanders at the time were simply trying to salvage some respectability from their biggest route since the Ardennes offensive.
A few years ago, I came across an essay that basically said the same thing. It also added how no one wants to take the initiative and responsibility in battle. Unless the command comes from above, and above, etc. no one does anything lest they are blamed for any failure and have to face the consequences.
I really recommend this book by Kenneth Pollack: Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948 - 1991. It has a very in-depth analysis of the difficulties Arab armies have faced in combat, and examines the military history of Libya, Iraq, Syria, Jordon, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. I don’t have it kicking around near me at the moment and it’s been a while since I read it, but IIRC the biggest problems Arab armies face is a lack of decision making and initiative. Arab armies tend to only do well when following pre-planned scripts, and when the situation changes, they’re lost. They just don’t react well to changing situations. There are also problems with lack of training, as there’s the fear that well-trained armies might revolt and overthrow the government. OTOH, a number of Arab armies excel in other areas. IIRC it was Iraq and Libya that showed real skill in logistics which impressed the author.
I’m not sure how that counters my overall argument since for most of those wars Israel was armed by Western allies, directly assisted by Western forces and is guaranteed to have conitnued superiority to most other countries in the region (Witness the recent sale of F-15s to Saudi Arabia. Those planes were not sold without Israel agreeing to the conditions and guaranteed inferiority of the planes). My quick look at the Arab-Israeli wars shows Egypt to be one of the main instigators and they did fairly well in the Yom Kippur War, though they might have lost if the war continued.
Also, for anyone who is trying to compare military forces by saying one country has this plane or that plane, this tank or that tank, there’s a lot more to warfare than just who’s got what weapons.
(1) Only 1 oil-producing state is in the G20. Compare the list of G20 countries to the list of top 20 militaries according to global firepower. See a relationship?
(2) According to this Wikipedia entry we were aiding Israel indirectly from about 1960. Later we developed an explicit policy concerning Israel’s military edge:
I see that Israel, Egypt and Iran are in the top 20 in military strength while not showing among in the G20 economies. For that matter, so do Turkey, Pakistan, Taiwan, Mexico and North Korea.
And there are several G20 members who do not have top 20 militaries (e.g., South Africa)
So to answer your question: um, no, not really . . . 
Did you have a point?
Not to totally derail this thread but some people say that Israel never needed America’s aid and it only held them back from wiping out their enemies.
The reason that so many middle eastern militaries are hugely incompetent, is that their governments are dictatorships.
Dictatorships are poison to good militaries.
Dictators are all paranoid. They’ve got their position as leader through power, and they know it. And the biggest power in their nation is the military. So all dictators ultimately become paranoid and start doing things to their military that make it less of a threat to the leadership. They try to make their military coop proof by doing things like creating a confused mixed chain of command, so no one general can find it easy to use the armed forces against the government. They make generals unquestionably follow orders, or else. Those generals instil an atmosphere of unquestionably following orders to the lower ranks, because they’re scared that someone below them will do something that will upset the dictator.
So maybe you have a well trained, motivated military out there somewhere, and a dictator comes into power. Within a decade the rot will start. Troops will stop finding solutions to problems on the spot, and will instead wait for orders from above. The entire armed forces change from an adapting, improvising, thinking organism, to one that waits for orders.
When you have that kind of situation, you can only have an early WW1 style military. It may have modern equipment but the way it fights is 1915. The way nations get past early WW1 style of fighting is to allow people at a low level wiggle room and place to improvise and adapt to the actual situation on the ground.
Iraq in 1991 was like this, Stalin turned the excellent Russian military of the mid 30s into a coop proof mess by 1941. Adolph Hitler did this towards the end of the war, putting Generals in power not for military ability, but political loyalty.
Here’s some footage of the Iran-Iraq war from the 80s
Notice how basically you’ve got two trench lines of troops and a large number of them just go forward onto the enemy. Very 1915. Modern weapons, old way of fighting.
Since the point is that cash is the best predictor of potential military ability, there should be a strong relationship between wealth (the size of the economy) and military strength. There is, despite the fact that you weren’t reading all that closely (Turkey and Mexico are in both top 20’s). Other than that, pointing out that a few countries did not fit the relationship isn’t negating the fact that wealth is a good predictor and can be argued to be causative.
On the other hand, there is no evidence that Arab or Middle Eastern cultures have some innately inferior characteristic preventing them from fighting well in the modern age - other than lots of cash and good friends.
Damuri Ajashi, I have no ability to argue that point and it may very well be true, but as you indicated it is not the point of this thread.
When people talk about the war of 98, they often make it seem like Israel had the advantage. It definetly did not. We had less men, less guns, less airplanes, less tanks, etc. Aside from the dedication and heroism of the israeli soldiers, the biggest Arab drawback was their inability to work together. Jordan would do its thing and count on Egypt to support it, but Egypt was busy doing something else.
Just my two cents.
I don’t think you understand the relationship between correlation and causation very well.
I think the rest of the thread provides quite a bit of evidence, including the informative insights above on a warrior vs. soldier culture and the corrosive effect of corruption and dictatorship. Did you miss all that?
It’s kind of sad that after the last 3 posts you made that you actually question somebody else’s understanding of correlation/causation, the usefulness of one variable in predicting another or any other statistical concept.
I didn’t miss any of the other reasons and I have no argument with any of them except warrior/soldier since it sounds nonsensical. I am sure corruption/dictatorship could be a useful predictor of military strength/skill/competency, just not quite as good as wealth.
It’s a bit of a jump from Iraq to the entire Middle East. The US military honestly but grossly overestimated Iraq’s military capabilities before the '91 Gulf War. It’s hard to blame the US military establishment, underestimating an enemy is probably the most common mistake in the history of warfare. The shadow of Vietnam and the underestimation of their will to fight were hanging over everyone’s head; along with that there was an untried all-volunteer military and unproven technology. In retrospect estimates of 10,000 dead liberating Kuwait seem absurd, but that number seemed much more plausible at the time than it does now.
The Iraqi army has never performed very well, it was quite inept in both its previous wars against Iran from '80-88 and their participation in the '73 war with Israel. Had it been led and performed competently, the Iraqi 3rd Armored Division would have been a serious threat to an exposed and unprepared right flank of the Israeli advance on Damascus in '73. Instead it stopped in mid-afternoon, didn’t perform the most basic of reconnaissance and walked into hastily prepared Israeli positions and was taken by ambush the next morning, losing ~1/3 of its tanks for virtually no losses to the outnumbered Israelis.
Projecting Iraqi ineptness in these wars to the whole of the Middle East, or Iraq now or in the future is fraught with problems however. For example, the speed and skill with which Egypt crossed the Suez at the outbreak of the '73 war took Israel by surprise, as did the resilience of their infantry to sudden armored counter-attack. The lesson from previous wars had been Arab infantry unsupported by armor would break readily in these circumstances, but Israel paid a high price in its armor-heavy immediate counter-attacks against the Egyptian crossings. For that matter there is always “Mission accomplished” and “We’ll be greeted with flowers” as mis-lessons from the last war.
What about it? How rich do you think these countries are?
GDP Per Capita:
Israel $26,796
Saudi Arabia ~$16,000
Syria $4,887
Jordan $3,828
Egypt $2,450
Not one of Israel’s actual neighbours is remotely a First World nation in terms of economy. (I didn’t include Lebanon because it’s not important in this discussion.) I didn’t include Iraq either; Iraq prior to being blown to bits in 2003 was richer than Syria but it sure as hell wasn’t in Israel’s league. Israel’s armed forces is typical of a country with that level of income; concentrated and highly professional. These are recent numbers but the gap in 1967, 1973 and such was similar.
This article says that a lot of the problem with the Iraqi and Afghan armies come down to logistics. Logistics problems are caused by corruption in Iraq and aggravated by illiteracy in Afghanistan.