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Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness, by Kenneth M. Pollack

Ebook Free Armies of Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness, by Kenneth M. Pollack

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Review

"A masterful, wide-ranging, compelling study of why Arab armies have typically fared poorly in combat. With this certain-to-be classic work, Ken Pollack solidifies his position as one of the world's foremost scholars on Middle Eastern military and political affairs." -- General David Petraeus (US Army, Ret.), former Director of the CIA"Ken Pollack argues convincingly that efforts to uncover causes of military success or failure must begin far from the battlefield. He shines new light on social, economic, political, and cultural impediments to improving military effectiveness in Arab states. His argument that the influence of culture is predominant is certain to generate introspection among Arab leaders and their overseas partners who support their military reform efforts. This should be read and debated by readers who want to understand better this complex and important region." -- H.R. McMaster, Former National Security Advisor and author of Dereliction of Duty "Few if any military analysts know as much, or have thought as deeply, about Arab armies as has Ken Pollack. In Armies of Sand-a masterpiece of political science-he distills a lifetime of learning to grapple with the most important and most difficult questions that lie at the intersection of technology, culture and politics. Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the dynamics of warfare in the Middle East." -- Max Boot, author of Invisible Armies"Armies of Sand belongs in the library of every military professional serving in the Middle East, whether Western or Arab. It is a unique blend of military history and social science that comprehensively explains the military effectiveness of our Arab friends and foes alike. Pollack has courageously and objectively tackled the sensitive subject of culture, which we ignore at our peril. Armed with its insights, future commanders might avoid the surprises and frustrations that have long been the hallmarks of military operations in this theater of persistent conflict." -- Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland, U.S. Army (Ret.); Commander of Coalition forces in Iraq and Syria, 2015-2016"This is a path-breaking volume on an uncomfortable topic: Arab military failure. Kenneth Pollack is the model of the engaged scholar, whose extensive field experience on today's battlefields complements his knowledge of military affairs and the Arab world more broadly. The volume is lucid, comprehensive and fascinating. His conclusions about the relationship between culture and military effectiveness will be controversial, but they are compellingly put and will set the terms of debate for years to come." -- Eliot A. Cohen, Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies, Johns Hopkins-SAIS

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About the Author

Kenneth M. Pollack has been an expert on Middle Eastern military and political affairs for over 30 years. He has served as a Persian Gulf Military analyst at the CIA and Director for Persian Gulf Affairs at the NSC. A longtime Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution, where he ran the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, he is currently a Resident Scholar of the American Enterprise Institute. His other books on the politics and military of the Middle East include the bestsellers The Threatening Storm, Arabs at War and its sequel The Persian Puzzle.

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Product details

Hardcover: 696 pages

Publisher: Oxford University Press (January 15, 2019)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0190906960

ISBN-13: 978-0190906962

Product Dimensions:

9.4 x 1.9 x 6.5 inches

Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

5.0 out of 5 stars

2 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#23,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Look at any of many military campaigns undertaken by Arab forces since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire: outcomes range from mediocre to pathetic. How could so much time, effort, money, foreign support and cultural emphasis on feats of arms result in such consistently dismal performance? Why have Arab armies repeatedly failed in their military endeavors? This is the “Riddle of the Sands”: what explains so little return on so great an investment? Ken Pollack’s brilliant history of Arabs at war is a simultaneously compelling, detailed, original undertaking and – for those who care about US foreign policy – required reading for the informed public.Ken Pollack’s very long and distinguished career centers on study of armed conflict in the Middle East. He began publishing on the topic in 2002 and continued academic research in Near Eastern/Persian Gulf affairs which he supplemented with numerous visits to the region, including to Ramala during the recent conflict as a US military advisor to Iraqi forces. In short, he’s well-qualified to assess and judge Arabic military competencies.Because “Armies of Sand” is methodical, meticulously researched and all aspects of the matter have been exhaustively accounted for it's long. Obviously, it takes time to investigate the claims and valid possible counter-claims. Importantly for the general reader, "Armies" should help clarify exactly what comprises vital national interests and whether or not further costly investments in Middle Eastern (and specifically Arab) military adventures are worthwhile. In sum, in the hands of a lessor author, this topic would be a tedious, jargon-laden academic tome and be consigned to the “required reading” list for mid-grade military officers aspiring for advancement and it's not that at all.Since writing “Arabs at War” (2002), Pollack’s books dealt with policy matters. At least one of them, “The Gathering Storm”, developed a highly contentious reputation, likely based more on casual reading and/or filtering through an ideological prism as contrasted with careful study of the ideas and proposals themselves. In “Armies of Sand” Pollack returns to his original interest: attempting to define factors underlying the haphazard and inferior performance of Arab arms. Remember, as Pollack writes: In war an army doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be better than its opponent. So, why the deficiencies from 1948 onwards?Because the author is careful and strives for exactitude (and maybe out of concern that a broad critique of Arab military performance is potentially problematic), each and every major possible contributing factor is stated, restated and stated yet again. Contending explanations are fully described and documented by numerous citations from the scholarly literature. For context, Arab military performance is compared and contrasted with examples from non-regional conflicts to find possible systemic trends in relevant military doctrine level of industrial development (or lack thereof), extent of “politicization” of the military hierarchy and – the most fraught potential explanation – Arab culture itself. Pollack’s book is current through the publication date and includes discussions of both Hizbollah and Da’ish (ISIS) as “non-traditional” Arab military actors.Of course, other experts have studied the problem of Arab military mediocrity, including general gtaff officers and planners in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iraq. Many explanations have been proffered for bungled military efforts and Pollack addresses them all. Is it rigid application of Soviet military doctrine? No. Perhaps it’s political contamination of the armed forces (e.g., the military is permeated with second-guessing political hacks acting as “commissars”, maybe the army is preoccupied with regime protection against internal enemies or fixated on assuming or maintaining power itself). Nope. Could it be lack of education or under-development. Not really.So, what remains? Few readers will complete “Armies of Sand” without accepting the author’s conclusion: the major problem is Arab culture itself. Since this is an obvious “third rail” argument, it’s treated with due care and occupies a significant number of pages. The author acknowledges that explanations overlap and combine to produce the unsatisfactory outcome.What is “Arab culture”? This is a topic Pollack acknowledges as potentially incendiary, so he is careful to avoid “folk theories” and anecdotes. The author uses the term thusly: “…in the anthropological sense of learned, shared values and patterns of behavior developed by a community over the course of its history. Culture is both the practice of how things are done in a society and the values that suggest how things should be done by the members of that society.” (p. 355) He explicitly qualifies and clarifies: “Please note that simply by pursuing the topic of Arab culture, I will be dealing with with what are, inevitably, stereotypes; I view this as unavoidable. Without question all Arabs, as individuals, act differently from one another and the notion of culture is least useful in understanding the behavior of individuals. No scholarly work regarding culture can claim to accurately predict the behavior of individuals in specific circumstances. Nevertheless, I accept the notion that culturally regular behavior does exist and that it is an important influence on the behavior of both individuals and groups, and that, as such, it is too important an element of human behavior to be ignored (footnote 20, p. 574).” So, as Sherlock Holmes noted to Watson, “…when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth” and Pollack carefully, logically, diligently and scrupulously considers all other possibilities, leaving this explanation (which he subjects to rigorous examination) as the overarching cause. This fault is acknowledged not only by respected Arabic military and academic sources, but also in various specific UN reports dealing with Arabic cultural shortcomings and their impact on social development, education, etc. Naturally, other factors Pollack cites contribute, but culture is the prime culprit, in deed and in fact.Specifically, what cultural factors contribute to military under performance? According to Pollack, these include: Conformity (do what everyone else in your tribe or unit is doing). Centralization of authority (non-delegation of decision making). Passivity and deference to hierarchies (discouraging individual initiative by lower-level commanders). Group loyalty (something akin to squashing individual initiative to maintain fealty to the group). Information manipulation (i.e., nobody wants to report bad news to the boss). “Atomization of knowledge” (preventing combined arms operations). “Personal courage” (“manliness”). An ambivalence to manual labor and technical work (contributing to maintenance issues with modern armaments). This is certainly a dour listing of problems as pertains to military performance.Pollack writes in an engaging, almost colloquial fashion and avoids use of discipline-specific jargon, tedious academic pretension and bombastic posturing. “Armies of Sand” is supremely well organized and comprehensively referenced. The book’s only shortcomings are use of arcane map symbols (NATO unit designations are used but not explained in figure references) and lack of an abbreviation glossary. Some chapters are replicative of “Arabs at War”, but use of that material makes “Armies” a stand-alone work."Armies of Sand" is a standout performance by an accomplished historian. It's utility for the specialist reader is obvious but its insights will inform and hopefully guide decision makers in various disciplines as well as serving the lay student of military history. It compares favorably with Clausewitz and other master students and interpreters of the military art. It's the capstone of a brilliant career for Ken Pollack..

"Armies of Sand: The Past, Present and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness” by Kenneth Pollack (2019). Partial comments by Dov Zakheim in an extensive book revfiew in the Feb. 10, 2019 online “The Federal Interest”:“Why have Arab armies performed so poorly? Whether fighting Israelis in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, Iranians in the 1980s, American coalitions in two Gulf Wars or being clobbered by the army of Chad in 1987, Arab forces have generally failed to achieve their military objectives. Kenneth Pollack, a respected veteran observer of Middle East political and military affairs, attempts to identify the underlying reasons in his compendious Armies of the Sand: The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness . The result is an informative, if somewhat flawed, book."Pollack focuses on politico-cultural factors as the greatest determinant of Arab military failures. ... "The bulk of his book is dedicated to explaining why this is the case. He dismisses as myths the four primary explanations given for Arab military failures: the notion that Arab armies lack initiative because of the influence of Soviet training on their officer corps from the mid-1950s until the collapse of the Soviet Union; the politicization of Arab militaries by their despotic governments; the impact of economic underdevelopment on Arab military performance; and Arab cowardice on the battlefield."Having made a powerful case that it was not Soviet training and doctrine that compromised Arab military effectiveness, Pollack devotes an entire chapter to reiterating his position by offering a detailed discussion of North Korean and Cuban military effectiveness respectively during the Korean War and the Angolan civil war......"Pollack acknowledges that “many of the Arab world’s most catastrophic defeats correlated with Arab militaries that were heavily politicized.” He does not apply the term “correlated” in its technical statistical sense, however. He does not explore the actual degree to which politicization has mattered more, or less, than some of the other factors he examines. To what extent is politicization a major factor, even if not the primary factor, that has affected how Arab militaries have fared? Or is it no more important than other factors? These questions remain unanswered."Having asserted that politicization is not the primary determining explanation for Arab military failures, Pollack then devotes two chapters on the operations of non-Arab armies—those of South Vietnam and Argentina, the latter in the Falklands War— to demonstrate that politicization does not necessarily undermine tactical military performance. These discussions seem to prove that there is some negative correlation—never actually measured—between politicization and performance on the battlefield ......,"Pollack then turns to rebut the argument that poor Arab military performance derives primarily from the economic underdevelopment of Arab societies. He argues that economic underdevelopment does not fully explain the overall ineffectiveness of Arab militaries. What he does not do, and could have done, was apply some rigorous analysis to his hypotheses...."Pollack’s overview of Chinese operations in the Korean War repeats much of what he has already written in a previous chapter, though from a slightly different perspective; repetitiveness is one of the more annoying shortcomings of the entire volume. .."Pollack’s assertion that technological development is not directly related to battlefield requirements calls for greater scrutiny. On its face, Pollack’s argument seems credible enough, until one accounts for the many systems that were developed specifically to meet the military’s needs. These include stealth and guided missiles, as well as the Global Positioning System, the thermobaric weapon and the Internet..."Once again, Pollack’s reliance on dated material undermines his argument. His primary source is Stephen D. Biddle’s fourteen-year-old study, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle , which focuses on the interaction between force employment and materiel, and is not necessarily tied to the twentieth-century operational objective of breaking through enemy lines..."Having postulated the importance of culture, Pollack then offers a lengthy and digressive discourse on the nature of culture generally and its influence on human behavior. In so doing, he ventures into areas far beyond what a reader interested in Arab military behavior might expect, ...."Pollack’s overall thesis certainly explains Arab military performance in the twentieth century. What is less evident is whether the various factors he identifies as the causes of Arab military failures can be weighted in the same way in the present or the future as they were in the past. He may speak of culture and military behavior appearing to be “perfectly correlated,” but runs no regressions, and never derives any coefficient of correlation, much less a perfect one...."As a historical analysis, there is much to be gleaned from Pollack’s volume, though relative to the long list of nearly fifty wars that he presents near the opening of his book, the number of conflicts he discusses and to which he returns in chapter after chapter is surprisingly small. His argument that culture is the most important of these factors lacks the quantitative support to render it decisive...."Nevertheless, Pollack convincingly outlines the various reasons for Arab military failures in the twentieth century. Moreover, few, if any, analysts have previously examined the various aspects of Arab military operations and tactics to the degree of depth that Pollack provides in this volume. To that extent, Armies of Sand belongs on the bookshelf of anyone seeking to understand why Arab militaries fared as badly as they did in the six decades after World War II."

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