Armies of Sand
The Past, Present, and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness
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Narrated by:
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David de Vries
About this listen
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.
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Revised and updated to reflect recent Russian and Western scholarship on the subject, this new edition maintains the 1995 original's distinction as a crucial volume in the history of World War II and of the Soviet Union and the most informed and compelling perspective on one of the greatest military confrontations of all time.
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The largest conflict in human history
- By Eddie on 05-15-22
By: David M. Glantz, and others
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Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East
- By: David Stahel
- Narrated by: Stewart Crank
- Length: 17 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Using archival records, in this book, David Stahel presents a history of Germany's summer campaign from the perspective of the two largest and most powerful Panzer groups on the Eastern front. Stahel's research provides a fundamental reassessment of Germany's war against the Soviet Union, highlighting the prodigious internal problems of the vital Panzer forces and revealing that their demise in the earliest phase of the war undermined the whole German invasion.
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Best book on Operation Barbarossa so far
- By Amazon Customer on 09-14-21
By: David Stahel
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Call Sign Chaos
- Learning to Lead
- By: Jim Mattis, Bing West
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Call Sign Chaos is the account of Jim Mattis’ storied career, from wide-ranging leadership roles in three wars to ultimately commanding a quarter of a million troops across the Middle East. Along the way, Mattis recounts his foundational experiences as a leader, extracting the lessons he has learned about the nature of warfighting and peacemaking, the importance of allies, and the strategic dilemmas - and short-sighted thinking - now facing our nation.
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A pleasant surprise
- By Fountain of Chris on 09-06-19
By: Jim Mattis, and others
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Armor and Blood
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- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 10 hrs
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While the Battle of Kursk has long captivated World War II aficionados, it has been unjustly overlooked by historians. Drawing on the masses of new information made available by the opening of the Russian military archives, Dennis E. Showalter at last corrects that error. This battle was the critical turning point on World War II's Eastern Front. In the aftermath of the Red Army's brutal repulse of the Germans at Stalingrad, the stakes could not have been higher.
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Big Ups to Prof. Showalter and Audible
- By Placeholder on 08-28-13
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The Second Sino-Japanese War
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- By: Captivating History
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Many people in the West look upon the Second Sino-Japanese War, which took place in the 1930s and 1940s, as a sort of sideshow to the larger Second World War, but there is no separating the two. Imagine the Pacific War, the theater of World War II that took place in the Pacific. If the Japanese were not busy fighting on another front, they would have had millions of more troops available to fight the Americans and the British. In all likelihood, World War II would have ended the same way, but it would have taken much longer and cost that many more lives.
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A good summary of Japan leading up to WW2
- By M Maurer on 11-18-21
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The Cambridge History of Warfare
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The new edition of The Cambridge History of Warfare, written and updated by a team of eight distinguished military historians, examines how war was waged by Western powers across a sweeping timeframe beginning with classical Greece and Rome, moving through the Middle Ages and the early modern period, down to the wars of the 21st century in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.
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Too anglocentric
- By A. Siegel on 10-27-22
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A Better War
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Neglected by scholars and journalists alike, the years of conflict in Vietnam from 1968 to 1975 offer surprises not only about how the war was fought, but about what was achieved. Drawing on authoritative materials not previously available, including thousands of hours of tape-recorded allied councils of war, award-winning military historian Lewis Sorley has given us what has long been needed - an insightful, factual, and superbly documented history of these important years.
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A thought-provoking history of the war 68-75
- By Rodney W. Schmisseur on 02-05-14
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The Accidental Guerrilla
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David Kilcullen is one of the world's most influential experts on counterinsurgency and modern warfare. A senior counterinsurgency advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq, his vision of war dramatically influenced America's decision to rethink its military strategy in Iraq and implement "the surge."Now, in The Accidental Guerrilla, Kilcullen provides a remarkably fresh perspective on the War on Terror.
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Not What I Expected
- By John on 12-12-10
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Project 9: The Birth of the Air Commandos in World War II
- American Military Experience, Book 1
- By: Dennis R. Okerstrom
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Project 9: The Birth of the Air Commandos in World War II is a thoroughly researched narrative of the Allied joint project to invade Burma by air. Beginning with its inception at the Quebec Conference of 1943 and continuing through Operation Thursday until the death of the brilliant British General Orde Wingate in March 1944, less than a month after the successful invasion of Burma, Project 9 details all aspects of this covert mission.
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The Gulf War
- A Captivating Guide to the United States-Led Persian Gulf War Against Iraq for Their Invasion and Annexation of Kuwait
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Jaime Peters
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Today, it is known by many names, like the First Iraq War, Kuwait War, and, most commonly, the Gulf War or the First Gulf War. It was a rather short conflict, lasting just shy of seven months between late 1990 and early 1991. Yet, it was still rather impactful because it showcased several essential innovations and changes in political and technological aspects of warfare, some of which are still part of modern conflicts.
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Title should be "In defense of Sadam"
- By michael doucette on 03-17-22
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Achtung Panzer!
- By: Heinz Guderian
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Published in 1937, the result of 15 years of careful study since his days on the German General Staff in the First World War, Achtung Panzer! argues how vital the proper use of tanks and supporting armoured vehicles would be in the conduct of a future war. When that war came, just two years later, he proved it, leading his Panzers with distinction in the Polish, French and Russian campaigns. Panzer warfare had come of age, exactly as he had forecast.
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Genius!
- By Parker Rydbom on 02-07-21
By: Heinz Guderian
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What listeners say about Armies of Sand
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Chris
- 09-26-19
Best resource for Middle East military’s not making 21st-century changes.
This book does a great job of compiling and synthesizing the information that many western militaries believe hinder the Middle East from becoming a 21st-century military power. Highly recommended for anyone working in the Middle East.
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- J$
- 02-12-23
A long windup to a short conclusion
A lot more about non-Arab militaries than was expected. Feel free to skip ahead to the last third of the book which focuses on culture.
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- Michael
- 08-28-19
A Very Worthwhile Listen
This is an excellent and most scholarly work by Mr. Pollack and wonderfully narrated by David de Vries.
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.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Haman
- 05-26-21
Insightful yet dull
The insight I gained about Arab culture and its knock on effects on organizational performance was indispensable. The battlefield descriptions however left plenty to be desired and only served to water down the social significance of the good content in this book.
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- Richard Karpusiewicz
- 03-27-22
Fantastic analysis
While it is lengthy, Pollack’s analysis is thorough and insightful. I would have loved to hear more about future warfare supported by scholarly sources, and how it could impact or insulate the Arabs from the deleterious cultural traits that have led them to fare poorly in battle. But overall this is a superb accounting of why, and how culture is a determinant of military effectiveness.
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.
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- Y. Harrington
- 12-03-23
Spectacular book…
Fantastic work on this book… and it answered, in a very clear and understandable way some lifelong questions I’ve had…
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- Glaudrung
- 01-09-20
Recommended
I'd recommend this for anyone who'd like to know about military science and/or why the middle east is the way it is. The account goes into very convoluted subjects that are usually only understood by a few wizards and manages to be clear and concise. One will even learn about many recent wars.
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.
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- Book Raven
- 01-27-21
Best Analysis
This is the best overall analysis of Arab military performance I have ever read. Kenneth Pollack breaks down Arab military effectiveness since 1945 in a truly academic fashion by contrasting different Arab armies with armies from both the developing world and first world. Kenneth Pollack examines how Arab culture has influenced their military effectiveness as well. He provides a balanced and in depth analysis of Arab military performance since 1945.
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- Robert
- 06-01-20
You Probably Already Know The Answer
Scholarly work in which the author provides the support for an answer you probably already knew. First half of the book the author debunks the other issues in order to explore the real issue for Arab military mediocrity.
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- Seo-Woo Choi
- 03-15-22
Flawed Analysis
I have endured many hours of banal recounts of various 3rd world wars, but you don't have to suffer that to find out author's thesis.
SPOILERS ALERT:
His conclusion is that the dominant Arabic culture is there to blame.
I happen to know a f**king huge counterexample to this thesis very well. KOREA.
His depiction of predominant Arab culture of the mid-to-late 20th century is completely IDENTICAL to that of (both North & South) Korea of the same era. Conformity of social expectations, thinking in groups rather than in individuals, centralization, deference to authority, etc... EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM are what characterized, if not DEFINED the Neo-CONFUCIAN morals & social philosophy that prevailed in Korean peninsula from at least 17th century if not earlier. Yes, the peninsula was subjugated to Japan for 35 years and 1/3 of the population has been Protestant Christian since the 1960s, but as Koreans themselves lament, this had little rectifying effect on Korean mentality. Many Koreans argue that pre-modern, pre-industrialized Korean Confucian culture that was already flawed in so many ways was even more perverted through colonialization and modernization, and the form of Protestant Christianity practiced in (South) Korea is a distorted one.
And the author used pre-industrialized North Korean army of the Korean War to CONTRAST it from the armies of the Arab states! I can only laugh at this. And while the Korean army has not fought any major war since the 1960s, one could not say that Korean armies - either North or South - have problems with tactical usage and maintenance modern armament. One has developed state-of-the-art tanks and artillery, and the other tested nuclear weapons and shoots ICBMs.
Why did junior officers and pilots of several Arab countries significantly underperform in multiple wars over several decades? I don't know, but I am sure that you will not find an answer in this book. I am returning this thing. I have wasted so much my free time on this.
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