All of which has led American trainers to develop a rule of thumb: a sergeant first class in the U.S. Army has as much authority as a colonel in an Arab army.
This post is already too credible, so what the fuck, I might as well continue to dishonor it’s noncredibility even further.
You can’t really compare a modern major Arab army, to a western army. They serve different functions.
Major Arab armies, at least contemporary ones, are designed to primarily preserve the internal social order and hierarchy. They’re internal security forces, with war planes and tanks.
Which presents another problem, coup d’etats. You can’t risk your command staff aligning against your ruling class, or monarch, so they should not trained, or inclined, to cooperate too much. So you put rivals in charge a different branches, and make sure to purge anyone you cannot trust to preserve the status quo, above all else.
This also means small unit leadership and tactics are antithetical to the purpose of their military.
To be clear, I’m not talking about Arab militant groups or militias, and this is definitely not a function of race. It’s function of the types of political systems you currently find in much of, but certainly not all, of the Arab world.
Amazing. From what I heard Russia is the same, I’m wondering how is China (probably similar). Along with the known numbers, it also makes me think if there is even a credible threat to the US military’s dominance - probably not.
It’s also funny, how things like delegation of authority are very simple and proven concepts, yet it’s not used at a lot of places, even western companies. My squad only fights battles with ppts and clients, but I operate in the same way, often having weird interactions with other leaders, when I explain how I don’t hog power and information for myself unnecessarily.
https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/why-arabs-lose-wars
This post is already too credible, so what the fuck, I might as well continue to dishonor it’s noncredibility even further.
You can’t really compare a modern major Arab army, to a western army. They serve different functions.
Major Arab armies, at least contemporary ones, are designed to primarily preserve the internal social order and hierarchy. They’re internal security forces, with war planes and tanks.
Which presents another problem, coup d’etats. You can’t risk your command staff aligning against your ruling class, or monarch, so they should not trained, or inclined, to cooperate too much. So you put rivals in charge a different branches, and make sure to purge anyone you cannot trust to preserve the status quo, above all else.
This also means small unit leadership and tactics are antithetical to the purpose of their military.
To be clear, I’m not talking about Arab militant groups or militias, and this is definitely not a function of race. It’s function of the types of political systems you currently find in much of, but certainly not all, of the Arab world.
This is worth its own separate post. Great read
That was a very interesting read. Now I’m super interested to read more papers comparing and contrasting military doctrine. Any ideas where to start?
Amazing. From what I heard Russia is the same, I’m wondering how is China (probably similar). Along with the known numbers, it also makes me think if there is even a credible threat to the US military’s dominance - probably not.
It’s also funny, how things like delegation of authority are very simple and proven concepts, yet it’s not used at a lot of places, even western companies. My squad only fights battles with ppts and clients, but I operate in the same way, often having weird interactions with other leaders, when I explain how I don’t hog power and information for myself unnecessarily.