Re: 2nd/3rd rate powers - LLAR - and now Africans...

----- Original Message -----
From: "Adrian Johnson" <adrian.johnson@sympatico.ca>
To: <gzg-l@scotch.csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2002 1:08 AM
Subject: RE: 2nd/3rd rate powers - LLAR - and now Africans...

> >Because the only good quality professional militaries
> >to ever come out of that continent have been either
> >Rhodesian or South African before the end of apartied.

> Oh?  Ever?  In all of human history?	There have been NO good
professional
> soldiers, EVER, from Africa - except for the Rhodesians (who were
beaten
> and lost their country) and South Africans (who collapsed and saw
their
> enemies elected to the Presidency)?

> Ask the British regulars who were wiped out at Isandlawanda.	The
worst
> defeat at the hands of "native forces" the British army faced *ever*. 
The
> Zulus has some very good troops, well trained, well motivated, and
pretty
> well led - for their era and their technology.  Ok, the British beat
them
> silly once they had their act together, but that was 2000 years of
> technological advantage talking, not necessarily just the training,
quality
> and fighting spirit of the troops.  If the Zulus had the same weapons
and
> the same access to "modern" training, etc., they'd have been plenty to
> handle for anyone.

Um, don't look now, but that "technological advantage" thing happens to
be
one of the most major factors that you have to consider when assessing
whether a military force is 1st, 2nd, or whatever rate.  A ferocious
fighting force that gets their loinclothes handed to them by an enemy
about
a tenth their size fighting thousands of miles from home in that day and
age
because of a two millenia tech advantage is not something I'd call 1st
rate
by any stretch of the imagination.  That final "if" is completely
irrelevant; they didn't have access to any of that and when they
attained it
they've had no idea what to do with it.

> For pete's sakes, the ancient Egyptians hired black African troops as
> mercenaries because of their reknowned ferocity in battle, and the
armies
> of the Pharoah, for that matter, had periods of great success.  For
their
> era, great professional fighting forces.  And most certainly from the
> African continent...

Against who?  Each other?  The Hebrews?  Ancient Egypt survived because
of
its geographical isolation.  They had the Sahara desert on the west, a
knot
of jungles at the Nile's headwaters to the south, and the Sinai
peninsula's
desert to the east. Once civilization advanced to a degree that the
Sinai
was no longer an impassable barrier, the Hittites, Greeks, and Romans
(as
well as probably a few others I'm forgetting off the top of my head)
took
turns conquering them.

> Or do you mean good quality professional *modern western just-like-us*
> militaries?

The only question that matters is whether you would win a war with X
power
with similiar amounts of force involved.  The 1st rate militaries would
win
a war with anybody, and I do mean anybody, with similar size forces
involved.  The reasons of _why_ they'd win, or how Western they are in
doing
it, don't matter.

When your enemy only needs smart weaponry capable of hitting just about
anything you've got before you even know they're there, a few special
forces
units on the ground to paint the targets with electronic crosshairs in a
stealthy fashion, to make the difference between an opposition militia
that
can't even get along with itself being bottled up in a corner of a third
world country with a historical reputation of being the most impassable
natural fortress on the planet, and an opposition militia that can't
even
get along with itself overrunning that same country, you're not first
rate
regardless of your pride or Westernness.

> Your comments ignore all of North Africa, right?  Some of the units of
the
> modern era Egyptian and Algerian armies might be pretty decent - the
> Egyptian combat engineers did a pretty good job breaching the Israeli
canal
> defenses, for example.

Um, in the main wars that mattered, Egypt vs. Israel has been a disaster
for
Egypt.	In the pivotal 1967 war that drew the map of the status quo
until
Camp David, the Egyptian army was so lousy with cronyism and the power
rivalry between Nasser and Amer that Israel blew right through it
despite
having a fraction of the Egyptians' numbers and having to fight Jordan
and
then Syria at the same time.  Communications and command was so terrible
that Nasser and Amer themselves needed several _days_ to find out that
Cairo
Radio's claims that their air force was controlling the skies and their
armies were at the gates of Tel Aviv were propaganda hogwash.  Their air
force had in fact ceased to exist as an effective weapon on the first
day
and their army disintegrated in the first two or three days.  Their
leaders
had no idea of the true situation on the ground before all they could do
about it was argue over whose fault it was that their army was in a
disastrous rout (in the process of which they lost something like 90% of
their weapons) and pray that somebody else convinced the Israelis to
stop
before they were in Cairo.

That's not "pretty decent".  That's "comically bad".

> The Moroccan army is supposed to have some very good troops, one
author I
> read called them the best in the arab world (and yeah, I know you
aren't
> exactly the biggest arab fan, but there are some good units out
there...
> the Jordanians have some also).

The story of Jordan's efforts in 1967 isn't much prettier than Egypt's.
Holding the Israelis off in Jerusalem for a few days was about they only
thing they did close to right.	King Hussein's grasp of the true
situation
on the ground as opposed to his own government's propaganda was only a
little better than Nasser/Amer's on the Egyptian side, and that's
because he
went to the front personally to see for himself.

Someone else will have to deal with the rest of your post, as they touch
on
things I'm not as familiar with (probably out of a lack of having heard
of
anyone who's that good).

E