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A very interesting essay - but it works better if you substitute 'arabic nations' with 'dictatorships'. Most of what he's talking about has far more to do with

A very interesting essay - but it works better if you substitute 'arabic nations' with 'dictatorships'. Most of what he's talking about has far more to do with the mechanics of maintaining a dictatorship than arabic culture. He probably missed this because he's both unwilling to acknowledge that he's been training the troops of dictatorships for his adult career, but also, that the US is generally involved in the propping-up of such dictatorships. US forces tend to spend a lot of time training extremely demoralized and unenthusiastic conscripts, surrounded by officers who see their own soldiers as the enemy, and don't trust eachother - and that's exactly what you expect of the army of a unpopular dictatorship, and it's exactly what such armies have looked like throughout most of history. The problems that mysteriously vanish when he talks about the 'elite units' are vanishing because the elites actually like the regimes they're in. They also seem to vanish when they worked with the Kurds, for instance.

woodandsteel 7y ago
>it works better if you substitute 'arabic nations' with 'dictatorships'. You are correct this applies to dictatorships in general, and in fact the article mentions the similarities to the Soviet military. But then you have to ask why the Arab nations are almost all dictatorships, and that brings you back to culture, at least considerably.
- pasabagi 7y ago
  Well, most countries are not particularly democratic, but countries with lucrative primary industries, especially strategically important ones, are often dictatorships. Which makes sense, because if you're a big nation, and you want to make sure your access to strategically vital resources is safe, you want to have a friendly government in charge - and a client dictatorship is dependably friendly, since they need you for the weapons they need to stay in power. I'd say there's also the compounding influence of the colonial legacy. A colony usually has no culture of the 'citizen', since the people of the colony are basically a resource exploited by the colonist. Without a deep culture of citizenship, it's kinda hard to get a robust democracy going.
  - woodandsteel 7y ago
    >Well, most countries are not particularly democratic And that is due to a great extent to culture, which is what the article is about > A colony usually has no culture of the 'citizen', since the people of the colony are basically a resource exploited by the colonist. But Arab culture prior to the relatively brief period of Western colonization also did not have a concept of citizen, at least not in the democratic sense.
    - pasabagi 7y ago
      >But Arab culture prior to the relatively brief period of Western colonization also did not have a concept of citizen, at least not in the democratic sense. This sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, and I found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottomanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottomanism, which is kinda interesting. I'm thinking the Ottoman thinking is probably the most relevant, since most of the middle east was part of the Ottoman empire.
jdm2212 7y ago
There's more commonalities than just "dictatorship". Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan and Syria are all made up of multiple competing groups (tribes, religious sects, etc.) and the dictator is carrying out a delicate balancing act where the various groups are played off one another. Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore at one point all had dictators, but they also had a strong sense of national identity. The dictators didn't have to worry about military coups led by ethnic/religious/tribal minorities, so they could allow their militaries to be powerful and independent enough to overthrow the state (because they wouldn't).
- pasabagi 7y ago
  You've picked some of the most coherent nations to make your case - but they're absolutely the exception. Rule by minority ethnic group is the classic tactic of the British empire - they did it all over the world, from Ireland to India. Part of the reason why it works is because you don't actually need pre-existing divisions to make it work. If you take a country (say germany) and start treating a minority group far better than the rest (say, east germans), it wouldn't matter how arbitrary the division is before minor cultural and social differences start to really matter. Even something as 'small' as having government jobs open only to the minority group is usually enough to create massive divides in social and cultural norms. Part of the genius of the strategy is because even if you see it happening, and don't believe in it, you have to play along. If you're the hypothetical 'east german', you have to support the dictator, because the dictator losing power would, at the very least, lose you your good position - and at the worst, could have you killed in a pogrom. The dictator and the minority group have a symbiotic relationship - the minority group give the dictator enough support to draw loyal officers, government officials, police and so on from. The minority group in turn get kickbacks and privileges.

woodandsteel 7y ago

>it works better if you substitute 'arabic nations' with 'dictatorships'. You are correct this applies to dictatorships in general, and in fact the article mentions the similarities to the Soviet military. But then you have to ask why the Arab nations are almost all dictatorships, and that brings you back to culture, at least considerably.

pasabagi 7y ago
Well, most countries are not particularly democratic, but countries with lucrative primary industries, especially strategically important ones, are often dictatorships. Which makes sense, because if you're a big nation, and you want to make sure your access to strategically vital resources is safe, you want to have a friendly government in charge - and a client dictatorship is dependably friendly, since they need you for the weapons they need to stay in power. I'd say there's also the compounding influence of the colonial legacy. A colony usually has no culture of the 'citizen', since the people of the colony are basically a resource exploited by the colonist. Without a deep culture of citizenship, it's kinda hard to get a robust democracy going.
- woodandsteel 7y ago
  >Well, most countries are not particularly democratic And that is due to a great extent to culture, which is what the article is about > A colony usually has no culture of the 'citizen', since the people of the colony are basically a resource exploited by the colonist. But Arab culture prior to the relatively brief period of Western colonization also did not have a concept of citizen, at least not in the democratic sense.
  - pasabagi 7y ago
    >But Arab culture prior to the relatively brief period of Western colonization also did not have a concept of citizen, at least not in the democratic sense. This sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, and I found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottomanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottomanism, which is kinda interesting. I'm thinking the Ottoman thinking is probably the most relevant, since most of the middle east was part of the Ottoman empire.

jdm2212 7y ago

There's more commonalities than just "dictatorship". Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan and Syria are all made up of multiple competing groups (tribes, religious sects, etc.) and the dictator is carrying out a delicate balancing act where the various groups are played off one another. Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore at one point all had dictators, but they also had a strong sense of national identity. The dictators didn't have to worry about military coups led by ethnic/religious/tribal minorities, so they could allow their militaries to be powerful and independent enough to overthrow the state (because they wouldn't).

pasabagi 7y ago
You've picked some of the most coherent nations to make your case - but they're absolutely the exception. Rule by minority ethnic group is the classic tactic of the British empire - they did it all over the world, from Ireland to India. Part of the reason why it works is because you don't actually need pre-existing divisions to make it work. If you take a country (say germany) and start treating a minority group far better than the rest (say, east germans), it wouldn't matter how arbitrary the division is before minor cultural and social differences start to really matter. Even something as 'small' as having government jobs open only to the minority group is usually enough to create massive divides in social and cultural norms. Part of the genius of the strategy is because even if you see it happening, and don't believe in it, you have to play along. If you're the hypothetical 'east german', you have to support the dictator, because the dictator losing power would, at the very least, lose you your good position - and at the worst, could have you killed in a pogrom. The dictator and the minority group have a symbiotic relationship - the minority group give the dictator enough support to draw loyal officers, government officials, police and so on from. The minority group in turn get kickbacks and privileges.