In the early hours of 5th June 1967, Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasser, the revolutionary leader of Egypt, received good news from his commanders. The Egyptian Air Force had destroyed three quarters of the Israeli Air Force and was laying waste to what was left of the enemy’s airbases. This information was immediately telegraphed to Egypt’s allies – Syria, Jordan, and Iraq – who enthusiastically entered the fray, expecting a walkover.
Nasser’s commanders hadn’t been entirely honest. Three quarters of an air force had been destroyed, but it was the Egyptian one: the Israelis had bombed 298 of Egypt’s 420 combat aircraft on the tarmac. In the face of the lightning Israeli ground offensive, Egyptian officers jumped in their staff cars and abandoned their men. The ensuing Six-Day War saw the coalition of Arab states lose 70,000 square kilometers of territory, despite fielding many more troops, tanks, and aircraft than their Israeli opponents.
In Armies of Sand, former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack explores why Arab militaries have underwhelmed on the battlefield, despite routinely enjoying advantages in men and materiel. This is not simply a product of superior Israeli military sophistication. Gaddafi’s Libya suffered a series of defeats at the hands of poverty-stricken Chad, while Saddam Hussein mounted what Pollack dubs ‘one of the most pathetic military offensives of the past century’ against Iran.
There are a few common theories among experts. For example, many Arab states relied heavily on Soviet doctrine and training. This emphasized preplanned operations and centralized control. When the situation on the battlefield changed unpredictably, officers froze. During the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the Syrians broke through Israeli defenses on the Golan Heights. But instead of pressing their advantage, the Syrian troops paused, in line with their pre-war plan. In the meantime, the Israelis rushed reserves forward and retook the territory.
Another common explanation is politicization. Leaders often feared their own militaries more than those of their opponents. This led to promotions based on loyalty and purges of experienced officers. At one point, Saddam Hussein had as many as sixteen different security services, which devoted an inordinate amount of time to spying on each other.
Pollack finds these explanations lacking. Cuba and North Korea both relied on Soviet doctrine and performed creditably in their twentieth-century military engagements. After substantial depoliticization in the 1970s, Egyptian military performance remained as dismal as ever.
Instead, he argues that these failures stem from patterns common in many Arab cultures: deference to authority, loyalty to the in-group over outsiders, a premium on personal honor, and horror of shame. The fear of shame explains why Nasser’s commanders told him he was winning, while the deference to hierarchy explains why battalion officers would stick to orders long after they ceased to make sense.
Pollack locates much of this culture in formal and informal education. The Arab family is large, patriarchal, and built around the father’s unquestioned authority. Modern Arab education has its origins in the Quranic schools that were, for centuries, the main form of education in much of the region. In these schools, knowledge comes down from a higher authority, and pedagogy is based on memorization.
When governments built mass public school systems in the 1950s and 60s, they changed the syllabus but preserved the teaching methods, which emphasize rote learning over problem solving. This tendency seeps into military training, which often consists of rehearsing pre-scripted maneuvers. An American trainer working with Egypt’s elite F-16 pilots recalled that ‘they know where to turn, and where to pretend to fire munitions, and who is going to win’ before exercises started and that they would get ‘extremely upset when someone did something he was not supposed to do’.
In most Arab offices and government ministries, authority is concentrated at the top and risk taking isn’t rewarded. Bosses behave as patriarchs who lend money to staff, mediate personal disputes, and intervene in family matters. In one study of Egyptian, Saudi, and Sudanese bureaucracies, 90 percent of senior officials deemed their subordinates ‘unqualified to innovate’. The Egyptian or Iraqi lieutenant standing on the battlefield has been immersed in this worldview, likely for decades, across successive institutions.
The exceptions largely support Pollack’s case. Hezbollah emerged as a highly capable fighting force after reducing its numbers following the Lebanese Civil War. This meant they retained only the small minority of culturally atypical individuals who’d proven themselves on the battlefield. Meanwhile, Islamic State, at its 2014 peak, drew its most gifted commanders from Chechens, Uzbeks, and Tajiks.
Anyone who has interacted with a bank or government ministry in the Middle East will recognize many of the traits Pollack describes. They continue to pose a challenge for regional efforts at social and economic reform.
Alex Chalmers is a staff writer at the Cosmos Institute and a former editor at Works in Progress.
I don't know. Does "deference to authority," really describe the Middle East? This is a region where people constantly rebel against the government, often based on their own interpretations of theology. Syria had an authoritarian dictatorship for forty years, and then the second the opportunity arose we learned that the people hadn't internalized the values of the regime and the country burned down. Saddam was toppled and the Iraqis immediately started hitting his statue with shoes. You have Sadat's assassination, and Arafat years later saying he couldn't strike a deal with Israel without being killed by his people.
How does "deference to authority" explain any of that?
Echoes many points from this (slightly outdated) essay: https://americandiplomacy.web.unc.edu/2000/12/why-arabs-lose-wars-fighting-as-you-train-and-the-impact-of-culture-on-arab-military-effectiveness/
I think this part was key:
> The Arab military mind does not encourage initiative on the part of junior officers, or any officers for that matter. Responsibility is avoided and deflected, not sought and assumed. Political paranoia and operational hermeticism, rather than openness and team effort, are the rules of advancement (and survival) in the Arab military establishments. These are not issues of genetics, of course, but matters of historical and political culture.
Historically, the most important part of any military organization is the non-commissioned officer (NCO) corps. NCOs joined as enlisted men and gained promotion through combat (as opposed to “commissioned” officers), and are responsible for the on-the-ground tactical decisions necessary to implement a strategy. An NCO corps that’s empowered to take individual initiative is what allows an army to respond to new threats. They are the ones that keep soldiers in squares against a cavalry charge or close gaps arising in battle to prevent flanking maneuvers.
The examples are endless. The Roman centurions and the jointed maniple structure are why the legions defeated the Hellenistic Empires. Napoleon’s battles were won, over and over again, by intelligent commanders making good decisions on their own. The vaunted late 19th-century Prussian military machine was a victory of operations and strategy, and one of their greatest assets was their NCO that could respond to real battle conditions in a way that the French, for example, could not. You can see the same in the ongoing Russo-Ukranian war: Ukraine’s units are led by empowered NCOs with freedom, and so, they have far more tactical flexibility.
This generalizes beyond military organizations. The most important layer in a software company is the “tech lead,” who runs small teams to deliver specific projects. High-quality tech leads are essential to effective delivery; poor-quality ones create innumerable problems across the org.
But their effectiveness depends on an environment of psychological safety. If taking initiative means you own every unintended consequence, then people will choose self-preservation and the organization will suffer. This is as true in the army (see: Russia) as it is companies (see: Amazon of a few years ago).
The lesson here is that tactical execution is often more important to success than high-level strategy. The best strategy will not save poor execution, but the good execution has saved bad strategy over and over again (see: every Roman commander that ordered a charge). Strategy, however, is where most interventions happen, because its visible, obvious when wrong, and most importantly, it doesn’t require making hard changes to organizational culture to fix. Fixing execution, OTOH, requires grassroots change, and many orgs never have the political capital to even attempt that.