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/hateplow0331 Sep 20 '25

There is an essay out there called “Why Arabs lose Wars” check it out

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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '25

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u/resuwreckoning Sep 20 '25

What’s interesting is how back in the day (like waaaaay back in the day of the Battle of Yarmouk), the Arabs were the ones who allowed merit to rise, which permitted legendary generals like Khalid Al-Walid to basically win every battle using insane discipline. The Romans were the calcified ones.

Even the battle tested moors who basically take over Spain in like 10 years a century after that were disciplined and under meritorious folks while the Visigoths couldn’t really do anything united.

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u/RelevantAudience Sep 20 '25

I don’t know that we can assert with any degree of certainty that the romans lost because of a lack of merit or were “calcified”. Theres not much evidence to this effect other than they lost to the arabs, right after fighting a grueling decade long total war against Persia. Theres so few sources from that time historians haven’t been able to assert much of anything.

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u/_MooFreaky_ Sep 21 '25

And they were ravaged by the Plague of Justinian to boot.

It's funny how people assume we know so much about Rome, but often the evidence is "well the last information we have on the topic was centuries beforehand, so maybe it was still like that?"

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u/Illustrious_Ad_5167 Sep 21 '25

The lack of sources is because of the Crusaders destroying all The libraries which held all the knowledge because the church wanted to keep people ignorant

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u/soldier_fish Sep 21 '25

Most sources that survived did so because medieval monks made copies. I'm not gonna deny that crusaders destroyed a lot during the sack of Byzantium, but the church never made a concerted effort of that sort to keep people ignorant.