Armies of Sand

Armies of Sand
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages : 697
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780190906962
ISBN-13 : 0190906960
Rating : 4/5 (62 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Armies of Sand by : Kenneth Michael Pollack

Download or read book Armies of Sand written by Kenneth Michael Pollack and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.


Armies of Sand Related Books

Armies of Sand
Language: en
Pages: 697
Authors: Kenneth Michael Pollack
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2019 - Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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, an
Armies of Sand
Language: en
Pages: 697
Authors: Kenneth M. Pollack
Categories: Political Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-12-06 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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, an
Armies of Arabia
Language: en
Pages: 369
Authors: Zoltan Barany
Categories: Political Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2021 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Armies of Arabia is the first book to comprehensively analyze the armed forces of the Gulf monarchies. Zoltan Barany explains the conspicuous ineffectiveness of
Immortal
Language: en
Pages: 401
Authors: Steven R. Ward
Categories: Political Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2014-01-15 - Publisher: Georgetown University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Immortal is the only single-volume English-language survey of Iran’s military history. CIA analyst Steven R. Ward shows that Iran’s soldiers, from the famed
Arabs at War
Language: en
Pages: 732
Authors:
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2004-01-01 - Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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 an