A retired U.S. Army colonel with years of experience observing and advising Arab military forces explains. He cautions that it is all too easy to attach intellectually lazy stereotypes to other societies, but argues that culture must be understood to explain how different armies fight.

John Keegan, the eminent historian of warfare, argues that culture is a prime determinant of the nature of warfare. In contrast to the usual manner of European warfare, which he terms “face to face,” Keegan depicts the early Arab armies in the Islamic era as masters of evasion, delay, and indirection. Examining Arab warfare in this century leads to the conclusion that the Arabs remain more successful in insurgent, or political, warfare — what T. E. Lawrence termed “winning wars without battles.” Even the much-lauded Egyptian crossing of the Suez in 1973 at its core entailed a masterful deception plan. It may well be that these seemingly permanent attributes result from a culture that engenders subtlety, indirection, and dissimulation in personal relationships.

Along these lines, Kenneth Pollock concludes his exhaustive study of Arab military effectiveness by noting that “certain patterns of behavior fostered by the dominant Arab culture were the most important factors contributing to the limited military effectiveness of Arab armies and air forces from 1945 to 1991.” These attributes included over-centralization, discouraging initiative, lack of flexibility, manipulation of information, and the discouragement of leadership at the junior officer level.

The article goes on to elaborate on these points.

I found this link on One Hand Clapping, where someone added a comment explaining the success of the Israeli army against numerically superior Arab forces. (Scroll to the last comment.)

Posted By Judith (Kesher Talk) at March 26, 2003 08:25 AM | TrackBack