Nations not infrequently fall into the trap of thinking that the armies and military of other nations are relatively useless. It can trap them into a false sense of security. It can also make them more bellicose and trigger-happy, persuading them that going to war is a small matter. It will all be done and dusted in five minutes. Or so we are told. Nationalistic fervour is never a reliable guide in such matters.
The history of nationalistic fervour leading to underestimating one's enemy is not exactly garlanded with laurel leaves. Norvell De Atkine, a U.S. Army retired colonel with eight years residence in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, and a graduate degree in Arab studies from the American University of Beirut, acknowledges some of the spectacular failures that have resulted from underestimating an enemy. In an article entitled, Why Arabs Lose Wars, he writes:
Including culture in strategic assessments has a poor legacy, for it has often been spun from an ugly brew of ignorance, wishful thinking, and mythology. Thus, the U.S. army in the 1930s evaluated the Japanese national character as lacking originality and drew the unwarranted conclusion that the country would be permanently disadvantaged in technology.5 Hitler dismissed the United States as a mongrel society6 and consequently underestimated the impact of America's entry into the war. As these examples suggest, when culture is considered in calculating the relative strengths and weaknesses of opposing forces, it tends to lead to wild distortions, especially when it is a matter of understanding why states unprepared for war enter into combat flushed with confidence. The temptation is to impute cultural attributes to the enemy state that negate its superior numbers or weaponry. Or the opposite: to view the potential enemy through the prism of one's own cultural norms. American strategists assumed that the pain threshold of the North Vietnamese approximated their own and that the air bombardment of the North would bring it to its knees.7 Three days of aerial attacks were thought to be all the Serbs could withstand; in fact, seventy-eight days were needed.Despite these warnings and mistakes, De Atkine argues that culture does need to be taken into account when assessing armies. In particular, he believes certain cultural traits contribute to the ineffectiveness of the Islamic armies of the Middle East. Amongst these, he identifies:
It is particularly dangerous to make facile assumptions about abilities in warfare based on past performance, for societies evolve and so does the military subculture with it. The dismal French performance in the 1870 Franco-Prussian war led the German high command to an overly optimistic assessment prior to World War I.8 The tenacity and courage of French soldiers in World War I led everyone from Winston Churchill to the German high command vastly to overestimate the French army's fighting abilities.9 Israeli generals underestimated the Egyptian army of 1973 based on Egypt's hapless performance in the 1967 war.10
[Footnotes: 5 David Kahn, "United States Views of Germany and Japan," Knowing One's Enemies: Intelligence Before the Two World Wars, ed., Ernest R. May (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 476-503.
6 Gerhard L. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany: Diplomatic Revolution in Europe, 1933-1936 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1970), p. 21.
7 Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Penguin Books, 1984), p. 18.
8 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987), pp. 186-187. The German assessment from T. Dodson Stamps and Vincent J. Esposito, eds., A Short History of World War I (West Point, N.Y.: United States Military Academy, 1955), p. 8.
9 William Manchester, Winston Spencer Churchilll: The Last Lion Alone, 1932-1940 (New York: Dell Publishing, 1988), p. 613; Ernest R. May "Conclusions," Knowing One's Enemies, pp. 513-514. Hitler thought otherwise, however.
10 Avraham (Bren) Adan, On the Banks of the Suez (San Francisco: Presideo Press, 1980), pp. 73-86. "Thus the prevailing feeling of security, based on the assumption that the Arabs were incapable of mounting an overall war against us, distorted our view of the situation," Moshe Dayan stated."As for the fighting standard of the Arab soldiers, I can sum it up in one sentence: they did not run away." Moshe Dayan: Story of My Life (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1976), p. 510.]
1. Hoarding Knowledge
In every society information is a means of making a living or wielding power, but Arabs husband information and hold it especially tightly. U.S. trainers have often been surprised over the years by the fact that information provided to key personnel does not get much further than them. Having learned to perform some complicated procedure, an Arab technician knows that he is invaluable so long as he is the only one in a unit to have that knowledge; once he dispenses it to others he no longer is the only font of knowledge and his power dissipates. This explains the commonplace hoarding of manuals, books, training pamphlets, and other training or logistics literature.2. Subordinates are Inferior Beings
Most Arab officers treat enlisted soldiers like sub-humans. When the winds in Egypt one day carried biting sand particles from the desert during a demonstration for visiting U.S. dignitaries, I watched as a contingent of soldiers marched in and formed a single rank to shield the Americans; Egyptian soldiers, in other words, are used on occasion as nothing more than a windbreak. The idea of taking care of one's men is found only among the most elite units in the Egyptian military. On a typical weekend, officers in units stationed outside Cairo will get in their cars and drive off to their homes, leaving the enlisted men to fend for themselves by trekking across the desert to a highway and flagging down busses or trucks to get to the Cairo rail system. . . . The young draftees who make up the bulk of the Egyptian army hate military service for good reason and will do almost anything, including self-mutilation, to avoid it.3. Authoritarian Autocracy
Decisions are made and delivered from on high, with very little lateral communication. This leads to a highly centralized system, with authority hardly ever delegated. Rarely does an officer make a critical decision on his own; instead, he prefers the safe course of being identified as industrious, intelligent, loyal—and compliant. Bringing attention to oneself as an innovator or someone prone to make unilateral decisions is a recipe for trouble. As in civilian life, conformism is the overwhelming societal norm; the nail that stands up gets hammered down. Orders and information flow from top to bottom; they are not to be reinterpreted, amended, or modified in any way.Arab armies and military structures generally have no place for the leadership and field command-control of non-commissioned officers. In the West, an army marches and fights on the skills, leadership, and on-the-spot decision making capabilities of its NCO's. Amidst the fog of war, the latter are essential. Arab armies and military complexes are likely to be ineffective in actual battle because of this serious defect.
The causes of such cultural military incompetencies are likely to be complex. But it is worth speaking a little about the elephant in the room. Islam creates such cultural deficiencies as those notified above.
Islam is an autocratic religion: the key virtue is submission--spiritually, socially, societally, and mentally. Allah has a chain of command. Those who deviate are dangerous. To be sure this is a huge advantage when it comes to suicide bombing. If a war is to be fought and won by suicide bombing actions, then Islamic armies would be impregnable and they would never be defeated. Islam rewards compliance, even unto death, with the promise of eternal bliss. There is no place for conscience in Arab armies. There is no room for military law which binds all--generals, officers, and grunts.
Secondly, Islam does not foster decentralised organisation. Allah is monergistic. He has no confidants. He has no equals with whom he thinks, plans, discourses, and executes. Allah only has subordinates, over whom he has totalitarian control. His control is exercised from subordinate superiors to subordinate inferiors. Command and control exists only in the context of a superior being requiring the submission of inferior beings.
These religious doctrines shape Islamic culture. They also shape Islamic military organisation and armies. Does this mean that they will always be incompetent in war? Yes, and no. As noted above, in some kinds of military actions, Islamic armies may be very effective. But in more traditional warfare, when--
. . . we are here as on a darkling plainmuch, much less likely.
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
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