Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military EffectivenessSince the Second World War, Arab armed forces have consistently punched below their weight. They have lost many wars that by all rights they should have won, and in their best performances only ever achieved quite modest accomplishments. Over time, soldiers, scholars, and military experts have offered various explanations for this pattern. Reliance on Soviet military methods, the poor civil-military relations of the Arab world, the underdevelopment of the Arab states, and patterns of behavior derived from the wider Arab culture, have all been suggested as the ultimate source of Arab military difficulties. In Armies of Sand, Kenneth M. Pollack assesses these differing explanations and isolates the most important causes. Over the course of the book, he examines the combat performance of fifteen Arab armies and air forces in virtually every Middle Eastern war, from the Jordanians and Syrians in 1948 to Hizballah in 2006 and the Iraqis and ISIS in 2014-2017. The book ultimately concludes that reliance on Soviet doctrine was more of a help than a hindrance to the Arabs. In contrast, politicization and underdevelopment were both important factors limiting Arab military effectiveness, but patterns of behavior derived from the dominant Arab culture was the most important factor of all. Pollack closes with a discussion of the rapid changes occurring across the Arab world, and suggests that because both Arab society and warfare are changing, the problems that have bedeviled Arab armed forces in the past could dissipate or even vanish in the future, with potentially dramatic consequences for the Middle East military balance. Sweeping in its coverage, this will be the go-to reference for anyone interested in the history of warfare in the Middle East since 1945. |
Contents
| 1 | |
1 Patterns of Arab Military Performance | 23 |
Part I Soviet Doctrine | 45 |
Part II Politicization | 105 |
Part III Underdevelopment | 231 |
Part IV Culture | 341 |
The Past Present and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness | 510 |
Notes | 525 |
| 611 | |
| 647 | |
Other editions - View all
Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness Kenneth M. Pollack No preview available - 2020 |
Common terms and phrases
Abandoning Vietnam Air Force aircraft American Angola Aouzou Strip Arab armed forces Arab armies Arab Legion Arab militaries Arab society Arab world Argentine armored artillery ARVN assault attack Barakat battalions battlefield brigade British Chad Chadians Chinese combat combined arms commissarist Cordesman and Wagner Corps counterattacks Cuban Da’ish defeat defensive deployed Development Division Easter Offensive Egypt Egyptian enemy Enter the Dragon Falklands Falklands War FAPLA fight fighters fire firepower flank formations fought ground forces GUNT Habré Hizballah impact important infantry invasion Iran Iranian Iraq Iraq’s Iraqi Islamic Israel Israeli Jordanian junior officers large numbers Latrun Lebanon Lessons of Modern levels Libyan logistical maneuver Middle East military effectiveness North Korean offensive operations PAVN performance personnel pilots political politicization positions problems regime Saddam SADF Saudi senior Six-Day War skills soldiers South Vietnam Soviet strategic tactical commanders tanks troops underdevelopment unit cohesion victory Vietnamese warfare weapons Willbanks