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So, I served in the military and happen to have studied Arabic and Arab culture quite a bit. Furthermore, I am kind of a military history buff. The core streng

So, I served in the military and happen to have studied Arabic and Arab culture quite a bit. Furthermore, I am kind of a military history buff. The core strength of our military is that we put a lot of power in the hands of career NCOs, who are literate and often carry more knowledge in their heads than the boot lieutenants nominally in charge. We even have a Warrant Officer track for technically minded NCOs. The no-career-NCO Soviet Union style military which most of the Arab nations have embraced is a serious hindrance, and it's notable that Russia did away with it in 2008, leading to better military unit performance in recent conflicts. I would guess that the Soviet military system was originally adopted to balance the need to utilize an illiterate uneducated peasantry while at the same time denying them any real power or opportunity to move up the social ladder. It is interesting to me that the system persists in many of the U.S.' allies today.

alricb 11y ago
The US isn't very concerned that its literate, educated NCOs will get together and overthrow the government (although with the current political situation I'd say the risk is higher than it used to be). In Vietnam, they tried to assassinate the president [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1962_South_Vietnamese_Independence_Palace_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1962_South_Vietnamese_Independ...
- Dr_tldr 11y ago
  No idea why you got downvoted. The author of the article definitely agrees with the basic thrust of you argument, although maybe not your speculation in the parentheses. If you look at arab militaries as existing in-of and for themselves, they appear to be incredibly inefficient and badly organized and should be reformed. But if you look at them from a political perspective, they're still inefficient and badly organized, but there's a lot of solid political logic as to why. In the case of many arab regimes, having an ineffectual and divided military isn't a bug, it's a feature.
bane 11y ago
It's my understanding that the Soviet style organization is basically a continuation of the normal Soviet ultra-centralization-of-everything policies that extended from the military organization to centralized hot water boilers in Soviet cities. The Soviet education system was pretty good, by WW2 it had turned a territory with <28% literacy (for Women it was ~13%) into an empire with >75% literacy. In later years the number was no doubt near 100%. It works to a point for command and control, but greatly reduces tactical flexibility and decision making. As we've also learned from the GWoT is that centralization makes it easier to disable an organization and that distribution of concerns can enable forces to be much more resilient to losses.
- ptaipale 11y ago
  > The Soviet education system was pretty good, by WW2 it had turned a territory with <28% literacy (for Women it was ~13%) into an empire with >75% literacy. Note that it was fairly easy to improve literacy by a lot, because the starting point was so low, after the reactionary and eventually dysfunctional rule in Russia proper. But of course the progress during Soviet rule was still quite remarkable. But already before that, Finland, where I live - what was a Grand Duchy under the tsar, a part of the empire but not part of Russia - had literacy rate 98 % in 1880. The duchy was self-governing within the empire, the central government just taking care of foreign and military policy. The tool to reach this was religious/church control of sexual lives: here you couldn't get a marriage permission unless you'd acquired enough literacy to read religious texts.
- DrScump 11y ago
  WW2 it had turned a territory with <28% literacy (for Women it was ~13%) into an empire with >75% literacy Sure, but I'm guessing that most of the tens of millions who died from starvation under Stalin were illiterate. That skews the counters a bit.

alricb 11y ago

The US isn't very concerned that its literate, educated NCOs will get together and overthrow the government (although with the current political situation I'd say the risk is higher than it used to be). In Vietnam, they tried to assassinate the president [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1962_South_Vietnamese_Independence_Palace_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1962_South_Vietnamese_Independ...

Dr_tldr 11y ago
No idea why you got downvoted. The author of the article definitely agrees with the basic thrust of you argument, although maybe not your speculation in the parentheses. If you look at arab militaries as existing in-of and for themselves, they appear to be incredibly inefficient and badly organized and should be reformed. But if you look at them from a political perspective, they're still inefficient and badly organized, but there's a lot of solid political logic as to why. In the case of many arab regimes, having an ineffectual and divided military isn't a bug, it's a feature.

bane 11y ago

It's my understanding that the Soviet style organization is basically a continuation of the normal Soviet ultra-centralization-of-everything policies that extended from the military organization to centralized hot water boilers in Soviet cities. The Soviet education system was pretty good, by WW2 it had turned a territory with <28% literacy (for Women it was ~13%) into an empire with >75% literacy. In later years the number was no doubt near 100%. It works to a point for command and control, but greatly reduces tactical flexibility and decision making. As we've also learned from the GWoT is that centralization makes it easier to disable an organization and that distribution of concerns can enable forces to be much more resilient to losses.

ptaipale 11y ago
> The Soviet education system was pretty good, by WW2 it had turned a territory with <28% literacy (for Women it was ~13%) into an empire with >75% literacy. Note that it was fairly easy to improve literacy by a lot, because the starting point was so low, after the reactionary and eventually dysfunctional rule in Russia proper. But of course the progress during Soviet rule was still quite remarkable. But already before that, Finland, where I live - what was a Grand Duchy under the tsar, a part of the empire but not part of Russia - had literacy rate 98 % in 1880. The duchy was self-governing within the empire, the central government just taking care of foreign and military policy. The tool to reach this was religious/church control of sexual lives: here you couldn't get a marriage permission unless you'd acquired enough literacy to read religious texts.
DrScump 11y ago
WW2 it had turned a territory with <28% literacy (for Women it was ~13%) into an empire with >75% literacy Sure, but I'm guessing that most of the tens of millions who died from starvation under Stalin were illiterate. That skews the counters a bit.