The most important problems that Arab militaries have
experienced in battle since 1945 derive from behavioral patterns associated
with Arab culture. It starts from the fact that the other explanations just
don’t cover the full extent of the problem. The Russians probably helped the
Arab armed forces more than they hurt, and while politicization and
underdevelopment played important roles, they cannot explain the most damaging
and consistent shortcomings of Arab militaries in the modern era. But it’s not
enough just to demonstrate that the other explanations don’t fully explain the
problem.
There is a compelling case to be made that the primary
weaknesses experienced by the Arab armed forces since 1945 derive from culturally
motivated patterns of behavior inculcated by Arab educational processes.
That said, dealing with culture is like working with
nitroglycerin: it may be necessary to do so, even useful, but you have to
handle it with great care. This is one of those instances. Culturally driven
patterns of behavior are a critical element of the story of Arab military
ineffectiveness, but culture lends itself too easily to all kinds of abuse. Like
nitroglycerin, you have to treat culture with a lot of respect if you want to
use it without doing a lot of damage.
The Development of War-Making
Human beings have been waging war for longer than we can
remember. Warfare literally predates civilization and written history. Yet the
methods of war-making have changed radically over time as technology and human
organization have evolved. Unorganized bands of spear-throwing men gave way to
organized formations of spear- and shield- (and sword-) bearing men, which gave
way to bands of armored men mounted on horses, and so on up to the age of
drones, cyberwar, and stand-off precision munitions.
Over the millennia, it has been this interaction between
technology and human organization that has defined war-making in each era. Of
course, the technology has been more unpredictable and harder to control than
the organization. The technology typically comes into being for reasons having
little to do with war-making, and rarely at the opportune moment for war
leaders. Yes, Oppenheimer and company harnessed the atom in time to help the
United States win World War II, but they were able to do so only because
Rutherford, Bohr, Einstein, and others had discovered the basic scientific
principles by then, and those discoveries had nothing to do with warfare.
Generals have probably always wanted to be able to wage war from the air, but
that was effectively impossible before the Wright brothers figured out how to
fly.
Humans have often adapted scientific principles to develop
new weapons for a war when those principles were known, but that’s about as far
as it goes. German scientists devised the Snorkel to make their U-boats more
survivable in response to Admiral Dönitz’s pleas during the Second World War,
but Nelson, Andrea Doria, and even Themistocles would have loved to have had
submarines too; their wants had little impact on the progress of technological
development. When the scientific principles are unknown, they are unknown, and
a general cannot demand that they advance the way that he can his armies. As a
result, technology has really only ever been marginally responsive to the
desires of the warrior, even though it is one of the most important factors
driving the evolution of warfare.
Instead, the part of warfare that humans have been best able
to control has been our own organization, and there the demands of war have
weighed heavily. Throughout history, war leaders have sought and experimented
with new and better methods of organizing (and employing those organizations)
to defeat their foes. Although there are often difficult political and bureaucratic
fights to be won to institute a new organization, it has typically proven far
easier to increase military power by changing organizations (and the tasks that
those organizations perform) than to try to do so by demanding new weapons.
Indeed, as many starting with Charles Tilly have noted, organizing for war has
been an important element in the development of states themselves.
Thus, technology can be said to be an “objective” condition
of war-making, proceeding largely at its own pace and only modestly susceptible
to human manipulation at any given time. In contrast, organization and the
employment of military organizations—what we call tactics and strategy—can be
seen as a “subjective” condition that humans can change far more easily to try
to gain advantages with the technology at hand. Another way of putting it is
that at any given moment in time, the technology available to mankind makes it
possible to fight in many different ways, and different societies and
militaries will try to organize themselves and use those organizations to act
in different ways to gain advantages in battle.
The Dominant Mode of Warfare
Warfare is a competitive activity. For that reason, if only
in theory, there will always be a “best” way to organize and act in battle
given the available technology. I refer to that best way as the “dominant mode
of warfare” of the time. Few societies ever perfect the dominant mode of
warfare, but those that do typically enjoy great success on the battlefield.
Even those that come closer to the dominant mode than their foes secure an
advantage, possibly a decisive one. Indeed, it is ultimately what we mean when
we talk about one country having greater military effectiveness than another.
The Chadian armies of the 1980s were hardly the epitome of twentieth-century
warfare, yet they were much better at practicing the dominant mode of warfare
of that era than their Libyan foes, and that enabled them to defeat Libya
despite all of the Libyan advantages in firepower, air power, fortifications,
and logistics. The Chadians demonstrated greater military effectiveness, and
that is why they won.
The concept of military effectiveness itself ultimately
derives from an unstated conception that there is just such a “best” way of
doing things at any point in time given the technology available. It is what US
military personnel implicitly mean when they refer to “best military
practices.” That is why it is useful to have a concept such as the dominant
mode of warfare, because it establishes a constantly evolving but absolute
ideal that the relative concept of military effectiveness can be measured
against. The great military historian John Lynn has made a similar point,
suggesting the idea of “paradigm” armies that define the height of military
effectiveness at any given time, the best practices to which other militaries
aspire.3 These armies define the paradigm because they have proven best at
practicing the dominant mode of warfare of their era.
Of course, those nations with the highest military effectiveness—those
best able to perform the dominant mode of warfare—are not inevitably bound to
win at war because other factors such as numerical balances, generalship, etc.,
can trump military effectiveness. But like the Chadians, they have an important
advantage that can prove decisive. For that reason, most militaries endlessly
(and rightly) pursue the dominant mode of warfare of their time, and the best
try to refine or even reinvent it, trying new technologies or new organizations
and methods to take advantage of existing technology.
The Role of Culture
The notion that there is always a dominant mode of warfare
to which most militaries will aspire is a way of placing military effectiveness
in the context of time and circumstance. This is important because it points
out that what constitutes military effectiveness at any given time and what it
takes to be a dominant military change over time as the dominant mode changes.
Because technology changes and because humans are constantly innovating new
ways to organize and employ that technology, the best practices that constitute
the epitome of military effectiveness are constantly changing too, mostly
evolving slowly but sometimes very quickly in what have been called revolutions
in military affairs.
The reason that this is important is that what is required
from groups of humans to achieve the dominant mode of warfare at any given time
is also constantly changing. Human beings are not all alike, nor are groups of
human beings. Just as individuals have different abilities and ways of doing
things, so too do groups and societies, inculcated by the culture of the
society. Those traits are enormously important to war-making, and always have
been throughout human history.
Spears, swords, and shields were some of the earliest
weapons known to mankind but there are lots of different ways to use them in
battle. The Greek phalanx was a far more effective way to use those weapons
than the way most ancient civilizations had previously. But not every society
could field a competent phalanx. Really only a very few could, and some—notably
Sparta—were much better than others. That is because what it took to field an
effective phalanx was men steeped in certain patterns of behavior that caused
them to act in a certain way and that in turn allowed them to perform the way
that the organization and tactics of the phalanx required. Really only Greek
city states (and their colonies) could produce enough such men to field a
phalanx.
Sparta famously engineered its entire culture to produce the
maximum number of men who would act in exactly the best manner possible to make
the phalanx effective. So for a period of time, the Greeks figured out the best
way to employ the war-making technology of the time (spears, shields, and
swords). But only the culture of the Greek city state produced large numbers of
men able to function effectively in a phalanx. No other ancient society of the
time could do so. And Spartan culture took that to its absolute extreme, making
the Spartan phalanx the most effective of all.
In other words, what made Sparta the greatest military of
its era was its culture. Spartan culture was consciously engineered to produce
large numbers of men who would axiomatically perform in the manner that was
most conducive to success in the phalanx, and as long as Spartan culture
continued to produce large numbers of such men, and as long as the phalanx was
the dominant mode of war-making, Sparta was the greatest military power.
The same phenomenon was at work in later eras with English
longbowmen, Parthian cataphracts, Mongol horse archers, Swiss pikemen, British
men-of-war, German panzer divisions, and any number of other dominant military
forces that won not because of better technology, but because their societies
produced relatively large numbers of men with a skill set that enabled them to
use the existing technology in the best way possible. And because they produced
considerably more such men than their rivals, in some cases having men uniquely
able to employ the military technology of the era, they had an enormous
advantage over their foes.
What this demonstrates is that culturally derived traits and
behavior can be absolutely critical in determining military effectiveness, but
what matters is the extent to which those traits mesh with the technology and
organization (including the tactics) being employed by the armies of that era.
When the culturally driven traits of a society mesh well with the demands of
the dominant mode of warfare of the era, the armies of that society will tend
to be more effective, and in some cases may prove all-conquering. When they do
not mesh, the armies of that society will tend to do worse and—unless saved by
other factors such as numbers, wealth, favorable geography, powerful allies,
etc.—the society may be wiped out altogether.
Inevitably, the traits and behavior that allow a military to
succeed will change over time as the dominant mode of warfare changes. Some
societies may deliberately adapt, and adopt cultural practices that serve the
dominant mode of warfare, as the Spartans (and arguably the Prussians and
Israelis) did. Most won’t do so consciously, but they will nevertheless be
helped or hindered anyway based on the extent to which the dominant mode of war
suits the behavioral patterns fostered by their society—their culture—which
typically will have evolved for reasons unrelated to war-making.
The Mongols did not become great horse archers purposely so
that they could conquer Eurasia. The Mongols became great horse archers because
those were the skills they needed to survive on the twelfth-century Eurasian
steppe. However, once their society developed this skill and Mongol culture
began to produce large numbers of skilled horse archers, it gave Mongol
warlords such as Genghis Khan a military tool that enabled him to conquer
Eurasia. The Mongol army defined the dominant mode of warfare of the time.
Although the technology they employed—the horse and composite bow—were readily
available to other societies, no one was able to use it to make war as well as
the Mongols. This gave them an overwhelming tactical advantage over so many
other societies whose cultures did not produce large numbers of skilled horse
archers, not by any mistake on their part, but simply because their physical
and historical circumstances did not create a need for large numbers of skilled
horse archers.
The Mongols are an extreme example, useful to illustrate the
point. Let me turn to another example that shows the more normal course of how
culture and warfare interact over time. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, European wars were fought largely with muzzle-loading, smoothbore
muskets; flat trajectory cannon; and horsemen armed with swords, lances, and
pistols. This technology defined the dominant mode of warfare for that era, and
over time, the best armies learned how to organize themselves, train, and
devise tactics to get the greatest performance when using that technology.
Specifically, they learned to organize large groups of infantry in tight
formations to maximize firepower. Because muskets were horribly inaccurate, it
was possible to have such formations walk slowly, in formation, to a point on
the battlefield, then shift from a marching formation (column) to a firing
formation (line) and begin firing at the enemy, reloading, and firing again.
The cavalry of the time was typically held back, waiting for an opportunity to
charge forward and terrorize, disorder, and break enemy infantry formations, as
well as overrun enemy artillery. The artillery sought to slaughter and
disorganize enemy infantry (and cavalry) to render them more vulnerable to
friendly infantry and cavalry.
All of this called for a very particular set of skills and
behavior to produce military effectiveness, let alone victory. If we just stick
with the infantry of that time, we see that they had to be able to move in
formation and not become disorganized. They had to be able to fire and (of even
greater importance) reload their muskets while being fired at by their enemy
counterparts often no more than 50 yards away. And they had to be willing and
able to eventually fix bayonets, charge the enemy, and kill him in hand-to-hand
combat. For the soldiers, that meant that they needed to be brave (or inebriated);
highly disciplined; well-practiced at marching in formation, firing, and
reloading; and competent in hand-to-hand combat. For junior officers, it meant
that they needed to be able to organize the formations of their men, shift from
one formation to another at a moment’s notice, and move them quickly and
efficiently around the battlefield. In particular, they had to maintain iron
discipline among their troops in the maelstrom of an eighteenth-century battle,
which required that their men fear them more than the enemy. And they had to be
brave enough to stand or charge, as directed when directed, setting an example
for their men to follow. It is important to note that field officers in
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century European armies were not expected to
show lots of creativity and initiative. Indeed, they were generally trained and
encouraged to be unquestioning martinets because that was what was needed from
lower-ranking officers for an army to be successful in this mode of warfare.
The deprecation of independent action by junior officers was
in large part a result of the fact that the general commanding an
eighteenth-century European army could (theoretically) see the entire
battlefield, and it was his responsibility to formulate strategy, look for
opportunities, and maneuver his forces in response to the actions of his
adversary. The last thing that an eighteenth-century general wanted was a
subordinate acting on his own—or refusing an order from the general
orchestrating the battle. (General Seydlitz’s famous act of insubordination to
Frederick the Great at the battle of Zorndorf was a salient exception proving
the rule.) An eighteenth-century army would have been pulverized if all of its
captains and majors made decisions for themselves and acted independently, even
if in pursuit of their commander’s overall objective. The strength of such an
army was in the coordination of its forces and the ability of a general to see
(or create) an opportunity—a mistake by his adversary—and then quickly
concentrate superior force against it. Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz,
achieved by separating the Austrians and Russians and then crushing each in
turn, is a perfect example. On the other hand, if some English major at
Waterloo had seen a hole in Napoleon’s line and charged in with his battalion,
it would have created a battalion-sized hole in the English lines, through
which Napoleon would have quickly pushed a division or a corps. As Wellington
would have been the first to warn, nothing could have been more disastrous, and
why the Iron Duke would never have countenanced it.
Indeed, one of the most famous instances of such independent
and creative officering from that time—Sir John Colborne’s defense against the
French Guard at the end of the Battle of Waterloo—is a perfect exception
proving the rule. Colonel Colborne commanded the 52nd Regiment of Foot at
Waterloo and during the final attack by Napoleon’s Middle Guard, he led his men
out of the line of British infantry regiments and turned them at a right angle
to fire into the flank of the French, helping to rout one of the French
battalions. It is worth noting that this only came at the very end of the
battle, when the French had completely shot their bolt and were making one
last, desperate attempt to break the British lines. Had Napoleon anything left
to counter Colborne’s move, it could have been disastrous. But he didn’t and so
it worked. Moreover, Colborne’s feat is legendary because he was the only
battalion commander who did so. There were several dozen others manning the
ridgeline all afternoon, facing repeated attacks, and none of them (including
Colborne earlier) had tried this stunt. Moreover, even when Colborne did it, he
was the only one. None of his peers thought to do the same. Colborne was a
celebrated exception, but he was very much an exception to the rule of the
time, and he was only celebrated because he tried it in exceptional
circumstances that allowed it to succeed.
Fast forward to the twentieth century and everything has
changed. New technology has emerged: automatic weapons, indirect fire
artillery, trucks, tanks, airplanes. They have transformed the battlefield and
defined a new dominant mode of warfare. Firepower has become so lethal that
armies must disperse and rely on camouflage at all times. Demographic and
political changes have also placed far larger armies at the disposal of the
generals. Ground forces must deploy in open order, concealed as best they can,
and moving very quickly whenever forced to do so. Given the C3I (command,
control, communications and intelligence) available at the time, no supreme
commander could possibly control such forces in real time let alone orchestrate
a battle the way that an eighteenth-century general would. As a result, the
skills required of soldiers and (especially) field officers to succeed have changed
dramatically. Now, junior officers (including even NCOs) are expected to
understand the strategic plan of their commander but act independently to try
to accomplish the commander’s objectives, the famous German principle of
auftragstaktik. In this mode of war, tactical commanders have to show
initiative and creativity to win tactical victories. The job of the general is
now to recognize the pattern of tactical victories, reinforce success by
committing reserves, and so turn the tactical victories won by his subordinates
into strategic victories (largely by breaking through the enemy’s front lines,
routing his reserves and rear area services, and either surrounding or causing
the logistical and psychological collapse of the enemy army). For those familiar
with it, Stephen Biddle’s concept of the “modern system” of warfare captures
this approach, representing the dominant mode of warfare of the twentieth
century.
The point of this comparison is to illustrate that what it
means for a military to be effective changes over time as the dominant mode of
warfare changes. The skills that allowed the British Army to thrive on both
eighteenth-century European and nineteenth-century colonial battlefields were
the same skills that caused it to consistently underperform in the wars of the
twentieth century. It was largely the same British Army—with new kit—fighting
largely the same way. But the skills, methods, and approaches to warfighting
that produced success at Blenheim, Waterloo, and Omdurman produced disaster at
the Somme, Gazala, and Goodwood. The dominant mode of warfare had changed, but
the British Army had not, and its military effectiveness suffered as a result.
It should not be surprising that some societies (and some
military organizations) will be better able to produce the skills required by
the dominant mode of warfare than others. Those that do demonstrate greater
military effectiveness than those that don’t. Those that produce these skills
in the greatest abundance tend to be Lynn’s paradigm armies. As the great
French philosopher Raymond Aron once observed, “An army always resembles the
country from which it is raised and of which it is the expression.”
To some extent, this explains the rise and fall of some
countries and their militaries. Of course, economics explains a lot of that,
but there are always countries that punch far above their weight militarily in
any given historical period: the Swiss during the sixteenth century, the Swedes
during the seventeenth century, the Prussians during the eighteenth century,
the English and American Confederacy during the nineteenth century, and the
Germans and Israelis during the twentieth century. It would be argued that in
every case it was because their society just happened to produce large numbers
of men with the traits required for success by the dominant mode of warfare of
the era. Of course, over time, technology shifted, the dominant mode of warfare
changed, and what was required to succeed in war changed, disadvantaging those
who had once been dominant and bringing to power new countries whose societies
produced large numbers of men with the requisite skill sets (or behavioral
patterns) needed to succeed in the new dominant mode of war. Thus the Swedes
were the terrors of the seventeenth-century battlefield and that made them a
major player in European international relations at that time. But by the
eighteenth century they were no more potent than any other European country,
and so they declined to a second-rank power as befitting their economic,
demographic, and other endowments.
People’s behavioral traits can be shaped by many different
factors. Every kind of human grouping has a culture, but different kinds of
groupings have greater abilities to inculcate that culture than others. The
community or society we are born into (the country, nation, state, empire,
etc.) typically has the greatest ability because it dictates childrearing
practices and the educational methods employed with children and adolescents.
Nothing is a more potent means of socializing people into a set of cultural
norms.
But institutions and organizations within a society develop
their own cultures too. Often these cultures are themselves influenced by the
wider society’s culture. In other circumstances, they may employ a variation on
that wider culture, or develop something quite different—even directly contrary
to the wider culture. Militaries can be very powerful agents of socialization
because they take relatively young men (overwhelmingly men in the past, still
mostly at present) and put them through ferocious forms of education—what we
call training—to try to get them to think and act differently than they did as
civilians. Indeed, military training is a deliberate form of cultural
socialization. It is how armies get people to think and act in the ways
considered most conducive to warfighting by that society at that time.
So it is important to recognize that while the traits and
behaviors that provide an advantage or disadvantage to militaries at any time
given the dominant mode of warfare of that era are inevitably derived from
culture, that culture may be national/societal, it may be the organizational
culture of the military (which may replicate that of the wider society or
diverge from it in important ways), or it may be the culture of some important
subgroup—a particular tribe or ethnicity, an elite military formation, etc.
Indeed, it is a fascinating question how much the culture of the British
Army—which produced such incredible success from 1689 to 1898 and then so many
stunning failures from 1914 to 1945—was a product of the wider British culture
and how much the product of the unique features of the British Army (like the
regimental system) as it evolved over time.
No Judgments
Because it is culture—dominant or national, local or
subcultural, institutional or organizational—that determines which societies,
or which groups within societies, generate the largest numbers of men (and
increasingly, women) with the skills needed for success in the dominant mode of
warfare of the time, culture can obviously play a critical role in determining
military fortunes. However, none of this should be seen as applauding one
culture or denigrating another. Cultures, especially the cultures of nations
and other societies that lie beyond mere military organizations, emphasize some
traits and behavioral patterns over others based on the circumstances of the
society, both physical and historical. The traits and patterns of behavior the
culture favors make sense for its society in that place at that time.
In other words, culture can grant some advantages to a
society in certain activities where two societies are competing, but that does
not mean that one is superior to the other except in that narrow area of
competition. Remembering both the Mongols and the Romans is helpful here. The
Roman empire that stretched from the second century b.c. to the fifth century
a.d. and the Mongol empire of the thirteenth century a.d. were both phenomenal
conquerors. Both invaded numerous neighboring states and crushed their armies,
fought vast wars, and were consistently victorious. In both cases, there were
cultural aspects of their societies that were critical to their military
successes. Both societies contained cultural tendencies that allowed them to
generate much greater military power than their neighbors—whether it was the
tactical excellence of the Roman legion or the Mongol archer, or the strategic
ability of each society to keep generating large numbers of both. Both were
often superior to the societies they conquered in this narrow aspect of human
activity: warfare. That narrow superiority turned out to be extremely
important, especially to peoples conquered by these empires, such as the
Carthaginians and Chinese.
However, it does not follow that Roman or Mongol society was
superior in general, or in every way, or in any other way other than war-making
to other societies, even to those societies they conquered. Culture encompasses
a vast range of traits related to an equally vast number of human activities.
Just because the Mongols were better than the thirteenth-century Chinese at
war-making does not mean that they were superior in any other way. The Chinese
generally believed they were far more sophisticated, creative, and
knowledgeable than the Mongols. They may well have been, suggesting their own
culture was superior to that of the Mongols in producing many other desirable
skills. That sophistication did not save them from conquest because the Mongols
were superior in the one area that mattered when they clashed: war-making. (Had
the Mongols and Chinese competed in poetry or pottery rather than killing, the
outcome probably would have been very different.) But their competition was
military, and the Mongols proved far superior in that one area. Similar
arguments could be made about the relative advantages of Roman and Greek
cultures—arguments in which many Romans would have agreed on the superiority of
Greek philosophy, sculpture, rhetoric, etc., just not war-making.
There is also an important difference between the Romans and
Mongols. Whereas Roman culture seems to have given the Romans an excellent
ability to hold, retain, and integrate its conquests such that their empire
lasted for centuries, Mongol culture, so equally superb at conquest, did not
grant the same advantages to their empire. Mongol society did not do as well at
holding and building on what they had conquered, and so the Mongol empire did
not endure the way that the Roman empire did. Just because two great nations
were equally adept at conquest did not mean that they were equally adept at
other aspects of human endeavor. The advantages that culture may grant to
warfare does not mean that that culture or its society are somehow superior in
any way except in war-making at a particular moment in time.
Nevertheless, what should be clear from this discussion is that culture—national, subnational, and organizational—is an important element in military effectiveness. Moreover, just as we recognize that some cultures have proven instrumental to battlefield success by enhancing military effectiveness at certain periods of time, we should also recognize that other cultures can be just as critical to martial weakness by undermining military effectiveness. For every Sparta, Rome, Mongol horde, Wehrmacht, and Israel Defense Force there is likely to be another society badly hamstrung because its culture is not producing sufficient numbers of people with the traits best suited to the dominant mode of warfare of the time. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, that was exactly what happened to the Arabs.
