
Armies of Sand
The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness
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Compra ahora por $25.79
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Narrado por:
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David de Vries
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 15 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 20th century.
©2019 Kenneth M. Pollack (P)2019 TantorListeners also enjoyed...




















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Best resource for Middle East military’s not making 21st-century changes.
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Well written and narrated
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At first, I wondered if I hadn't chosen this book in error as I initially thought (in the first few minutes) perhaps it wasn’t for me. Boy was I wrong! It very soon grew on me and I was shortly deeply immersed in this fascinating work.
Having previously read material on the six day war I had idly wondered how the Israel Defence Force could be so good as to have achieved such a victory in the face of overwhelming military odds (and conversely, why did the forces arrayed against them appear to fall apart when they seemingly had every possible advantage).
Well Kenneth M. Pollack not only explains what happened, but why, in a range of post WW II conflict areas, the combat performance of Arab armed forces is almost universally deficient.
In particular, how cultural imperatives, political interference in military appointments and decision making and a range of other factors operated to ensure that Arab armed forces were always being hamstrung.
Well worth the credit.
A Very Worthwhile Listen
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For any who have ever marveled at Israel’s stunning victories in multiple Arab wars or wondered about why the Mongols were so incredibly effective but their empire seemed to crumble to dust immediately compared to Ancient Rome, this book is for you. For modern military analyses and scholarly work, this is an informed accounting about the role and relation of societal culture, economics, and culturally regular behavior on military effectiveness.
Fantastic analysis
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Spectacular book…
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I do not give the author a perfect score because while I learned many things in his brief accounts of many conflicts, I was already expert on others and saw some major oversimplifications involved (for instance, he subscribes to the myth there was a "winner" of the 2008 Israel-Hezbollah War).
Also, some of the things he said about Arab-Israeli Wars were unnecessarily opinionated. He also had no concept of naming conventions whether neutral or partial and proceeded to use pejoratives unnecessarily. Namely, he doesn't know what the definition terrorism is, bit that is also par for the course. He also refers to the West Bank as Judea&Samaria, and refers to the Palmach as a terror group.
I do not give the reader a perfect score because he sometimes mispronounces local names in bizarre ways. For instance, he pronounces Amir as what sounds like Armsh.
Recommended
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Best Analysis
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Insightful yet dull
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A long windup to a short conclusion
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Very good but EXTREMELY detailed
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