Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness
- ISBN-10
- 0190906979
- ISBN-13
- 9780190906979
- Category
- Technology & Engineering
- Pages
- 496
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2018-12-14
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Author
- Kenneth M. Pollack
Description
Since 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. Armies of Sand, Kenneth M. Pollack's powerful and riveting history of Arab armies from the end of World War Two to the present, 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. He then compares these experiences to the performance of the Argentine, Chadian, Chinese, Cuban, North Korean, and South Vietnamese armed forces in their own combat operations during the twentieth century. 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-political, economic, and cultural-as well as the rapid evolution in war making as a result of the information revolution. He 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 historical coverage and highly accessible, this will be the go-to reference for anyone interested in the history of warfare in the Middle East since 1945.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2018-12-06
- 496 pages
- Ebook
- Oxford University Press
-
- 2019
- 676 pages
- Paperback
- Oxford University Press, USA
Similar books
-
Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991
Kenneth M. Pollack, formerly a Persian Gulf military analyst at the CIA and Director for Persian Gulf Affairs at the National Security Council, describes and analyzes theømilitary history of the six key Arab states?Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, ...
-
Sand and Steel: The D-Day Invasions and the Liberation of France
By Peter Caddick-AdamsIn addition to covering the build-up to the invasion, including the elaborate and lavish campaigns to deceive Germans as to where and when the invasion would take place, Peter Caddick-Adams gives a full and detailed account of the German ...
-
The Killing Ground
By Tim TraversThis books explains why the British Army fought the way it did in the First World War.
-
Armies of Arabia: Military Politics and Effectiveness in the Gulf
By Zoltan BaranyArmies of Arabia is the first book to comprehensively analyze the armed forces of the Gulf monarchies.
-
Quicksand: America's Pursuit of Power in the Middle East
By Geoffrey WawroQuicksand untangles these strands as no history has done before by showing how our strategies unfolded over the entire century and across the entire region.
-
The Red Star and the Crescent: China and the Middle East
By James Reardon-AndersonJames Reardon- Anderson has sought to fill this critical gap. The volume examines the "big picture" of international relations, then zooms in on case studies and probes the underlying domestic factors on each side.
-
Rebuilding Arab Defense: US Security Cooperation in the Middle East
By Bilal Y. SaabIdentifying the pitfalls of diverse assistance programs, Saab convincingly demonstrates the importance of institution building in efforts to achieve effective security cooperation in a region that remains of great strategic significance.
-
Immortal, Updated Edition: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces
By Steven R. WardImmortal, now in an updated paperback edition, is the only single-volume English-language survey of Iran’s military history.
-
The Soldier and the Changing State: Building Democratic Armies in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas
By Zoltan Barany, Zoltan D. BaranyBarany takes a bold stance by saying that without solving the civil-military problem in new democracies, it is virtually impossible to solve any other issues. This is the most important book written on this subject in forty years.
-
Whirlwind War: The United States Army in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm (Paperbound)
By Frank N. SchubertThe United States provided the bulk of the forces arrayed against Iraq, with the U.S. Army contributing the greatest portion of the ground force. The Whirlwind War tells the story of this pivotal chapter in the Army's history.