Kenneth M. Pollack, Author, Armies of Sand
"Meanwhile, the influx of personal telecommunications and social media has not only made Arab populations realize how far they have fallen behind the rest of the globalizing world, it has enabled them to talk to one another without government controls and exposed them to new cultural, political, and economic systems that some desperately desire and others just as desperately fear."
Inevitably, these changes and pressures have hammered away at outmoded Middle Eastern autocracies and their sclerotic bureaucracies. After decades of smaller protests and revolts, the Arab world exploded in 2011 with revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Libya, and unprecedented unrest in Oman, Jordan, Morocco, Iraq, and Bahrain. The Arab Spring produced failed states and civil war in Syria, Yemen, and Libya (and Iraq too, albeit from other causes). It eventually convinced the governments of Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE to propose far-reaching political and economic reform programs, although little has been done in Morocco and Egypt yet, and it is unclear how far the others will go.
Kenneth M. Pollack, Author, Armies of Sand
"The profound economic and political changes transforming the Arab world are already affecting its culture too. People are ever more willing to protest and speak their minds. The younger generation is less willing to blindly follow authority figures. More are willing to take action to change their circumstances."
The rigid hierarchies of the Arab states come in for constant criticism, and new, flatter organizations are starting to emerge along with more of an emphasis on bottom-up direction. More and more people are seeking out progressive education to inspire entrepreneurship and critical thinking. In short, economic change bred political change which is now evolving into cultural change.
Of course, Israel is at the forefront of the information revolution—the “start-up nation,” as Dan Senor and Saul Singer famously dubbed it. In part for this reason, the Jewish state may succeed in riding the wave and so maintain its military edge. But other factors are reshaping Israeli society in less helpful ways. Israeli politics are becoming increasingly calcified around a far-Right coalition that caters to popular fears, but not popular aspirations. Israel’s economic success is seducing more and more young people away from the traditional Israeli ethos of service and sacrifice to the nation.
Kenneth M. Pollack, Author, Armies of Sand
"In other words, the politics, economics, and even the culture of Middle Eastern societies are changing in remarkable ways. The fact that these three features conspired to cripple Arab militaries and advantage Israel in the past should not be taken as a sign that they will continue to do so in the future. At some point, they may no longer produce these same patterns of behavior that determined the skewed, and therefore stable, military balance of the past 50-70 years."
Evolution and Revolution in Warfare
Just as the onset of the information age is having a heavy impact on the economies, politics, and culture of Middle Eastern societies, so too is it having an equally profound impact on warmaking. These changes have been long in the making, some with antecedents reaching back into the twentieth century, but they are finally maturing in ways that also augur for profound changes in future combat.
The advent of new technologies resulting in “smart” and “brilliant” sensors, communications, battle management systems, and munitions is driving an equally dramatic transformation of the military sphere. We are fast approaching the point where the capabilities of the munitions may be far more important than (because they far exceed) the capabilities of the platforms that launch them. Someday soon, having the greatest fighter pilots or planes in the world may be less important than having the best missiles and software in the world.
Cyber is another obvious area where information-age warfare may prove to be qualitatively different from industrial-age warfare. We still do not know how cyber capabilities will evolve over time, but cyber strikes may become ever more capable of partially or completely disabling kinetic systems, which could mean that the most important battle of all is the one waged by dispersed, networked teams of hackers battling one another for advantage. Whichever side gained that advantage might be able to render its enemy’s physical military forces impotent.
Kenneth M. Pollack, Author, Armies of Sand
"These and other emerging trends in modern combat demand personnel skills from 21st century societies very different from those of 20th century industrial warfare. In a world where technology and munitions do most of the reconnaissance and threat analysis, make most of the tactical decisions, and even do most of the maneuvering against the foe, Arab armed forces might suddenly do very well."
On such a battlefield, computers, sensors, hackers, and drones would obviate the need for effective information gathering and sharing among personnel, skillful tactical commanders, maneuverable combined arms formations, and personnel willing and able to seize fleeting opportunities. It might only require a handful of exceptional personnel at the top to devise an overarching strategy, and the Arabs have demonstrated that they can handle that.
A Military Balance in Flux
The changes in warfare and Middle East societies of the 21st century have already produced the first challenges to the old, stable balance of power. Groups like Hizballah, ISIS, various al-Qa’ida franchises, and the Houthis of Yemen, have won limited but important victories, encouraging them and others to believe that conventional force is back on the table for Arab militaries.
All of these groups benefit from a variety of societal factors that mark them out as very different from the Arab armies of the past (and most of the present too). They are born of terrorist groups and so have a much flatter, bottom-up cellular organization. They have survived years of combat in which leaders capable of functioning well in those circumstances rose to the top—and now know how to identify and train others. They have tremendous zeal and commitment to their cause, which allows them to compensate for other weaknesses. They tend to be small in size which allows them to select only the highest quality personnel. And they increasingly employ cyber and high-tech weaponry that allow individual fighters to inflict disproportionate damage.
Of course, they are not really able to challenge the regional military status quo. At least not yet. ISIS, al-Qa’ida, and the Houthis are being systematically cut down, mostly by Western-backed Arab armies that have been able to carve out small, elite units able to defeat these groups with copious outside support. Hizballah has consistently performed best of them all, but even in its case, it took roughly 6 times as many killed as Israel in its great “victory” in the Second Lebanon War.
Nevertheless, the better performance of all of these groups speaks to the potential changes taking place. Perhaps even more important has been the perception that these groups have been able to challenge the old military status quo and achieve outsized results like Hizballah’s victory over Israel in 2006, the ISIS conquest of northern Iraq in 2014, and the Houthi conquest of most of Yemen in 2015.
All of that is egging on other Middle Easterners, convincing them that the iron-bound military balance of the twentieth century is wearing thin, encouraging them to challenge the region’s geopolitical order by force in ways that they would not have dared twenty or thirty years ago. The future of Arab military power will be determined by how well its new political, economic, and cultural systems mesh with the new, dominant mode of warfare. As the information age transforms Arab society and warfare alike, it may reshape Arab military power—and everyone else’s too.
Kenneth M. Pollack, Author, Armies of Sand
"If history is any guide, this will involve a process of trial and error in which interstate war and the upheaval it brings are likely to become far more common again. In that sense, the future might very well look like the past. Specifically, like the period from 1948 to about 1973."
Then, the Middle East military balance was similarly unknown and regional states were all too willing to try to use force against one another because they did not understand who was weak and who was strong. This uncertainty produced repeated miscalculations that led to bloody wars, tens of thousands killed, dozens of governments overthrown, and a handful of nuclear crises thrown in for good measure.
In the end, when the audit of war has been tallied, the Arabs could find themselves just as hapless as they were during the industrial age, they could emerge as the Prussia of the 21st century, or they might just find themselves somewhere in-between. All that we can say for sure is that while the match between Arab society and warfare was a disastrous misfit during the industrial age, the information age might be something else entirely. If it is, the one thing we can say for certain is that it will transform the security and international relations of the entire Middle East.
Read part one of Ken Pollack's Analysis, 'Changing Balance of Power' here and read more from Pollack here....
Pollack is the author of the newly-released, Armies of Sand: The Past, Present and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness...
