Why are Arab armed forces so ineffective?
WHEN ARAB air-defence crews helped fend off Iran’s missile attack on Israel in April, they drew much praise. And yet Arab states are not usually lauded for their martial prowess; many have lousy military reputations. They have been repeatedly humiliated in wars with Israel. They proved ineffective during the 1991 Gulf war; Egypt deployed two armoured divisions but America quickly sidelined them when they struggled to overcome even limited Iraqi resistance. Other Gulf countries, such as Saudi Arabia, provided only a handful of troops. More recently, despite considerable American military support, the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen descended into a quagmire.
The problem is not a lack of money or hardware. Combined military spending across the six Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries along with Egypt and Jordan reaches just over $120bn a year (NATO’s 30 European members spent $380bn in 2023). Together they can marshal 944,000 troops (see map), 4,800 tanks and 1,000 fighter aircraft. Egypt and Jordan are among the biggest recipients of American military aid, getting some $1.7bn a year between them.
Much of that cash is squandered. Arab armed forces often splurge on vanity equipment like fighter jets that are ill suited to the asymmetric threats they face, argues Paul Collins, a former British defence attaché in Cairo. Flashy purchases are generally used to gain influence with Western governments, suggests Andreas Krieg of King’s College London. Qatar’s purchases of f-15s, Rafales and Typhoons have bought favour in Washington, Paris and London respectively. The business of buying, arming and maintaining combat jets is a cash-guzzler. Over the past ten years in Saudi Arabia, 54% of arms imports by value were lavished on aircraft. An obsession with air power generally comes at the expense of other service branches, such as the army and navy.
Indeed, for states whose prosperity depends on access to commercial shipping, many pay remarkably little attention to their navies. Fleets are small and usually focused on coastal defence. They also lack the early-warning sensors and interceptors that are useful for advanced seaborne air defence. They have done little to fend off the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. For decades, many Arab states saw few reasons to invest in navies, given American and British maritime protection, notes David Roberts, also of King’s College London. Even those that have begun to invest in them face serious manpower shortages. Qatar’s navy has ordered seven new ships from Italy. It will need 660 additional sailors to operate them, equivalent to a quarter of its current tally on deck.
More to the point, authoritarian Arab rulers are often wary lest their armies turn against them. Military commanders are loth to provide rank-and-file soldiers with the independence needed for combined-arms operations, as is common in the West. Training exercises are often highly scripted and bear little resemblance to the reality of combat, notes Mr Krieg. Arab armies are often separate from praetorian guards. Saudi Arabia’s 130,000-strong National Guard is the ruling family’s personal protection force. In Egypt, the army runs a sprawling commercial empire that dabbles in everything from holiday resorts to construction firms.
Some hope that Arab armies could serve as peacekeepers in Gaza, but experts doubt that their forces have the operational wherewithal to handle such a tough mission. More often than not, they struggle even to co-operate with each other. “They are all very suspicious, they still don’t trust one another,” argues Kenneth Pollack of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, and the author of a book on Arab military underperformance. Proposals in 2014 and 2018 to establish a joint GCC military structure rapidly fizzled out as smaller states fretted about ceding control to their bigger neighbours.
For many Arab leaders, securing America’s commitment to the region is a higher priority than creating a multilateral bloc of their own. Few envisage fighting a war with another state without American backing. The Gulf countries still rely on America for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and for its command-and-control centres and refuelling platforms in the region. The Saudis are doggedly seeking a defence pact with America.
Braves of the desert
There are pockets of martial excellence. The UAE and Jordan have good professional armies, especially their special forces and pilots. In 2015 Emirati special forces carried out a complex amphibious assault on the Yemeni port city of Aden that impressed Western observers. Jordan has been conducting regular air drops of aid over Gaza, a difficult mission over the densely populated strip. Smaller, well-trained elite forces have nurtured an inspiring esprit de corps. But specialist expertise is often imported: the UAE’s presidential guard and special forces have foreign advisers, most of them former Western officers, and are commanded by an expatriate Australian general.
Moreover, a measure of effective co-operation has begun. The thwarting of Iran’s attack on Israel, though marshalled by America, would not have been possible without quite a degree of Arab co-ordination, says Mr Collins. Since 2019, when a drone attack, probably by Iran, halted nearly half of Saudi oil production, Gulf and other Arab states have started integrating their air-defence systems. Some experts suggest that many Gulf air-defence units are more adept than their European counterparts. In 2022 a handful of Arab countries secretly joined Israel in a loose, American-led regional air-defence alliance that stitched disparate radar-detection systems together.
Some observers are still cautious. “There is nothing in the technical realm that is preventing integration of things like air defence,” notes Mr Pollack. “It’s all about the politics.” Big political changes at home could set the stage for military reform. Conscious of the looming energy transition, Gulf monarchies want to reshape their economies and societies. They are shifting money towards advanced military technology, including artificial-intelligence research centres, instead of just costly conventional platforms. Gulf governments hope that spending on whizzy military kit will also boost the civilian economy. But it may not do much to burnish their martial reputations. ■
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