Egyptian President Abdel Fatteh El Sisi recently announced that Arab League leaders have agreed to create a joint military force, a proposal that has eluded the Arab League for 65 years. Arab leaders have finally agreed to a joint force in the wake of the current crisis Yemen, in which Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have seized control of the capital and forced President Abdel to flee the country.
The force has already been lauded as a sign that Arab nations are starting to take charge of their own defense after decades of relying on the West to intervene whenever a crisis occurred. The Arab League Secretary General and the American Secretary of Defense have already endorsed the plan. The fact that the United States ended its arms embargo on Egypt around the same time that the joint force was announced was probably no coincidence. However, further inspection gives reason to be skeptical of the proposal.
The first problem has to do with the size of the force. While details are still vague, officials have stated that the joint defense force will be comprised of 40,000 troops along with naval and air support. Size matters when it comes to armed conflict and a 40,000 strong force seems hardly big enough to handle any crisis in the Middle East. In 2012, the Pentagon estimated that seizing Syria’s chemical weapons would require 75,000 troops (note that the figure does not include the number of troops necessary to pacify the entire country). Former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morrell estimated that defeating ISIS would require 100,000 ground troops. It is estimated that the Houthi rebels in Yemen are 100,000-strong.
Clearly, a meager force of 40,000 troops isn’t going to be of much use in the Middle East for anything other than disaster relief and parades.
Furthermore, the current fighting capabilities of Arab militaries are highly suspect. Entire books have been written on the poor capabilities of modern Arab militaries. In spite of having a large numerical advantage, Arab forces were utterly humiliated by the IDF in the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The last time Egypt sent troops into Yemen it turned into a Vietnam-style fiasco. The Egyptian military, in spite of being one of the largest militaries in the world, has been unable to suppress the Sinai insurgency. The much-vaunted Iraqi Republican Guard was unable to defeat Iran in eight years of fighting and was then annihilated in 100 hours by the US military. In short, no Arab state has fought a successful ground campaign in decades.
The Arab military deficiencies are not genetic, cultural, or environmental. Indeed, Arab warriors were arguably the best soldiers in the world during the seventh century, forging an empire that stretched from Spain to modern-day Pakistan. Professor Dennis Showalter argues that the reason Arabs have had a poor military record in recent years is that they have tried to replicate Western-style warfare rather than use their traditional nomadic fighting style. Arab militaries (including the ones that will comprise the Arab League’s joint defense force) are largely based on Western armies, and the replica is almost always worse than the original. When Arabs fight like they did in the days of Mohammed (which is exactly what ISIS is doing), they can be a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the proposed joint defense force will use this model.
There are also sectarian problems with the proposal. The bulk of the troops will likely be provided by Egypt, given its large military, while the Saudis will provide the bulk of the funding. Other Arab states like Jordan, Qatar and the UAE will likely provide smaller support such as special operations forces, precision-guided munitions and intelligence. All these nations are Sunni dominated states.
Understandably, nations with large Shiite populations like Lebanon and Iraq have voiced serious concerns. They fear that the proposed force could simply become a tool for Sunni sectarianism. Since the force is being created to fight Iranian-backed Shiite rebels in Yemen, their concerns might not be unrealistic. In a region as volatile as the Middle East, the last thing that’s needed is another reason to flare up tensions between Sunnis and Shiites.
Relations between Sunni nations aren’t exactly rosy either. For example, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have been at odds with Qatar for years over the latters support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Qatar also strongly objected to Egyptian airstrikes against ISIS targets in Libya, which prompted the Qatari ambassador to leave Cairo. Such differences would seriously hamper the effectiveness of a joint military force and may even prevent it from being formed in the first place.
To understand the difficulty in organizing joint defense forces, one must only look toward the European Union. People have been arguing for a joint European army ever since Winston Churchill proposed it in 1950. In spite of the fact that Europe does not have tensions and divisions even close to that of the Middle East, no such force has ever been formed. EU “battlegroups” have been created for humanitarian and peacekeeping missions, but they have never actually been deployed. If the nations of Europe can’t do it, there is little hope for the Arab states.
If the Arab League wants to unite and take responsibility for its own defense, it will have to do two things. First, the Arab states should create a unified command structure similar to NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE).
Rather than rely on a puny joint force, the Arab League should have a single headquarters to lead and coordinate the various Arab militaries in the event of a crisis. Second, and more important, the Arab League needs to stop being a bunch of bickering nations and start behaving like a united coalition. Until then, there is little hope that a joint Arab defense force will amount to much of anything.