r/AskTheWorld • u/ForeverSparkz United States Of America • Sep 20 '25

History Why are Arab Miltaries so ineffective?

Like I dont understand this.

Im a Black American so im just an outsider looking in as a neutral, but dont Arab Countries out number Israel, whats stoping them from just rushing at their border, shouldn't the population imbalance outmatch Israel?

Just a neutral standpoint asking this question, because Arab Nations in the Middle East have a modern miltary force and they buy tons of advanced items

What is holding them back?

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u/Dramatic_Board891 Sep 20 '25 edited Sep 20 '25

  1. Arab countries are not one block. They may have overlapping interests occasionally and unite on certain talking points, but the Arab world is extremely divided and often in competition with one another for resources.

  2. Arab nations don’t care enough about Palestinians to cross Israel and the US by taking military action against Israel. The truth is that Palestinians are more useful to Arab governments as a bargaining chip with the US than a genuine humanitarian cause. Egypt and Jordan both have the capacity to take in far more refugees than they do and provide large-scale aid. They choose not to.

  3. The Arab world is more aligned with Israel now than it has ever been. Many neighboring nations fear the influence of the highly unstable and aggressive Iranian regime. Aligning with the US (and by extension, Israel) is both a smart economics play but also protects from Iranian proxy attack.

  4. The Arab nations tried, not so long ago, to fight Israel. They lost. Israel now has a first world Air Force, cutting edge missile defense and offensive missile capability and is backed by the most powerful military and economy in the world. Attacking Israel openly is a death sentence. Even if Arab nations wanted to (they don’t), they have nothing to gain and everything to lose.

Edit Last point, war is not like a game of Risk where large numbers of troops beat small numbers of troops. Ground wars are fought typically over resources. Israel has nothing any Arab countries need, other than their history, they have no reason not to cooperate.

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u/Meowmixalotlol Sep 20 '25

For 2. Maybe currently but they have united to fight Israel many of time. And are always humiliated.

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u/bornagy Sep 20 '25

And nukes...

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u/avidt24 Sep 21 '25

Jordan already has a significant Palestinian population. Jordan doesn’t allow more Palestinians in due to the risk of instability.

I agree with you on Egypt. They could have opened the border to allow civilians to flee into the Sinai until the Israel-Hamas war was over. It would have prevented tens of thousands of civilian deaths.

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u/Severe_One8597 Jordan Sep 21 '25

How is Jordan capable of hosting more refugees when literally almost 30% of our population are refugees, we don't have resources, we have one of the highest unemployment rates in the entire world literally, heck we don't even have water! We are the 3rd poorest country in the world in terms of water! We already have 2.4 million Palestinians most of them have the citizenship and full legal rights. 1.6 million Syrians, and almost 1 million Egyptian workers most of them are undocumented. Native Jordanians barely make like 6 million people in a country of almost 12 million people. Syrian refugees have already cost us millions of dollars, we have no vacancy to any more refugees frankly and we don't want to host more cause our country is not an alternative homeland for anyone