Armed Forces In The Middle East

An examination of the Middle East's leading armed forces and their role in both military and political affairs. The book considers their missions, doctrine, training, equipment and effectiveness as fighting forces.

This annual reference provides a statistical study of military trends in the Middle East and a collection of essays analyzing the details and strategic significance of events in the region. The ninth annual review of the military forces and capacity of each state in the Middle East.

An examination of the Middle East's leading armed forces and their role in both military and political affairs. The authors consider their missions, doctrine, training, equipment and effectiveness as fighting forces.

The Arab-Israel Six Day War in June 1967 riveted world attention on the huge quantities of sophisticated weapons amassed in the arsenals of the Middle East – and left in its wake tangled political-military dilemmas and the intensification of the most dangerous arms race in the nonindustrialized world. How do major upheavals spread across borders so easily in the Middle East? What is the role of the military in the process of modernization? How can the rash of military coups be explained? Why is Israel, the most vigorous democracy in the Middle East, also the most vigorously mobilized and armed nation? J. C. Hurewitz, Professor of Government at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs, believes the answers to these and other pressing questions of Middle Eastern politics can be found only in a thorough examination of civil-military relations in each country, whether it is under military rule or not. The Middle East, as defined in this book, comprises eighteen states, stretching from Morocco to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Probing the role of the military in each state, the author assesses such other factors as the geographical and regional influences on specific national developments. Dominating all are the ramifications of the competing American and Soviet policies for the region. Through his analysis of the cold war tactics of the two Great Powers, and of the bewildering arms races and the confusion of military politics that these tactics have engendered, Professor Hurewitz brings into much clearer perspective the options for the West, and particularly for the United States, in this area. He has provided, in sum, an informative and fully documented study of the whole interplay of domestic, regional, and international politics in the postwar Middle East.

The sixth edition of this annual furnishes statistics on the population, resources, infrastructure, armed forces and military capacity of individual Middle East states. It also surveys strategic events in the region and assesses military balances among potential Middle East adversaries.