Armies of sand: the past, present, and future of Arab military effectiveness

Why have Arab militaries consistently performed poorly in war? Kenneth Pollack examines this vexing question in a vast and thought-provoking analysis of Arab military effectiveness across the battlefields of the Middle East since the end of the Second World War. He begins by naming the 1967 Six-Day War as the epitome of Arab military ineptitude and dysfunction and outlines four main schools of thought which have sought to explain Arab military failure throughout the decades. They blame, respectively, the impact of Soviet military doctrine on Arab armies, the politicization of Arab civil–military relations, the underdevelopment of Arab society, and the influence of...