Looking down on our planet from space, or even from an airplane, even from a short distance, there is no way that any signs of human activity can be seen on the surface of the Earth. Buildings and structures disappear, as do state borders.
However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. One of the two places in the world where state borders are still visible from space is the Middle East. The sharp border between areas of greenery and the yellow and brown deserts separates Israel and the areas it occupies from the Muslim countries surrounding Israel. The lands on either side of this border have similar soil, water and climatic conditions. However, the difference in their development is huge. This arises from a completely different level of civilization in Israel and its neighbours.
The series of articles, which already includes “The world’s armies – what is the actual potential and realistic military effectiveness of individual countries” and “Armies of Europe – what is the real military potential of Ukrainian and Russian troops and other armies of European countries“, as well as this article, strictly refers to the armies and armed forces of individual countries of the world. But, as the army is a kind of emanation of a given state’s strength, its ultimate argument, including the condition of the army is also a simple reflection of the condition of the whole of the country. Therefore, mentioning the level of civilization of a given country cannot be avoided, as this directly translates into the strength and quality of its armed forces.
There are numerous ways of measuring this level. So far, in our considerations, we have taken advantage of the simplest indicator – the Corruption Perception Index, CPI. This is absolutely sufficient for analysing military potential itself, but it is too simple for assessing the whole of the state and its economy. In turn, a more complex and nuanced indicator is the so-called Index of Economic Freedom, IEF, which, despite its name, reflects the quality of government, the law and the institutions in the given country, more than economic freedom, although, of course, economic freedom arises from the quality of the law and the condition of the institutions governing the state.
A more precise analysis of the IEF index shows that Israel is superior to its Muslim neighbours in the vast majority of parameters, but this difference is particularly large – even civilizational – in three categories. These are ‘Judical effectiveness’, ‘Government Integrity’ and ‘Property Rights’, namely the efficiency of the judiciary, the level of corruption – the equivalent of our ‘military’ CPI – and the protection of ownership rights. The only Muslim country that can, even if only approximately and only in some categories, be compared to Israel in this respect is the United Arab Emirates. Jordan and Saudi Arabia stand out positively in comparison with the average Islamic level, but are positioned some way behind the United Arab Emirates. Israel’s other closer and more distant Muslim neighbours are backward countries, completely corrupt, if not to say wild and barbaric. This also applies to Turkey, which was once quite civilized, but that was still back in the 20th century.
In physics, the existence of such an extremely large difference in the potential of some field, for example an electric field, carries with it a high probability of a discharge, a sudden, abrupt equalization of this difference. It is similar in society. A steep civilization gradient also incites sparks and violent political and social phenomena. As can be seen, it is not by chance that the Middle East has been the most explosive geopolitical place on the map of the world for decades. This is because Israel has two features that unbelievably irritate and provoke its Islamic surroundings. First, it is a fully civilized country, at the level of Western Europe or North America, and an affluent country, in which the standard of living of the citizens is very high, precisely European and American. On the other hand, Israel is… small. Smaller than one Polish voivodship.
Therefore, from the point of view of the average Muslim, namely a follower of an ideology based on the requirement to attack, rob and kill infidels, Israel appears to be incredibly tempting booty, being simultaneously rich and weak, ripe for falling into the hands of the Faithful, so that they can rob, rape and murder there without any obstacles. And when there is nothing left to plunder, so that they can establish a ‘Free Palestine’ there as an Islamic entity, just like other similar backward, corrupt, poor and savage countries.
Muslims, in various configurations and coalitions, have been repeatedly trying to destroy Israel, conquer it and exterminate all its inhabitants since its establishment, which they openly proclaim. All these attempts, sometimes, as in 1967, which was undertaken with a devastating numerical advantage, have invariably ended in Israeli victories. However, it was not a matter of luck or divine intervention, to which all the parties fighting for the holy land refer with pleasure. These are arties that identify very strongly with religion, which is unique to the Middle East.
After all, the condition and level of the armed forces is a reflection of the condition and level of the state’s civilization. Israel may have had fewer soldiers, tanks and aircraft than its opponents, but it decidedly outperformed them in terms of the quality of its weapons, training and organization.
There are more Muslim battalions, but the Israeli ones are smarter. An appropriately high qualitative advantage cannot even be eliminated by a very large quantitative advantage. As long as Israel continues to have such a clear civilizational advantage over its surroundings, it will continue to win. But what if these surroundings were to become civilized in line with the Israeli model? Then – although they could finally match it in military terms – they would lose the motivation to be aggressive and would gradually turn, if not immediately into Israel’s allies, then at least its peaceful neighbours. After all, such a process is already being observed in the case of Jordan.
The latest episode of the Middle East conflict
The latest episode of the wars in the Middle East started on 7 October 2023, at the end of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. This time, Hamas, the mafia organization ruling the Gaza Strip, a small pseudo-state located between Egypt and Israel on the Mediterranean Sea, tried to sweep Israel ‘into the sea’, a euphemism that Muslims love to use. The micro size of this enclave and the terrible poverty there under Hamas’s rule should not result in the underestimation of this adversary. Hamas is a terrorist organization which is fully dedicated to the destruction of Israel, and all of its actions serve this and only this purpose. So do all of the resources it controls, including the whole of the Gaza Strip and its inhabitants. Hamas sees no problem in murdering even a hundred inhabitants of the Gaza Strip if it manages to kill at least one Israeli. Additionally, the Islamists have no qualms about bombing their own hospital (Ahl Ahli in Gaza on 17 October 2024) with missiles, just so they can accuse Israel of this, according to the mechanism referred to by psychologists as a projection of ‘crimes’ and ‘genocide’.
The resources at Hamas’s disposal are by no means limited to Gaza itself. Weapons and money are supplied to it in abundant quantities by all enemies of Israel and Western civilization. So Hamas’s military power is much greater than the resources of Gaza itself would suggest. Hamas fired several hundred missiles into Israeli territory on 7 October 2024, while its ruthless thugs, referred to as ‘peace activists’ in anti-Israeli propaganda, invaded the Israeli border with only one objective – to murder as many people as possible, in the most sophisticated, barbaric and cruel way possible. More than a thousand completely random people were murdered in Israel in just a few days. Civilians, including women and children who happened to be in the path of the Islamic death squads, foreigners, and even other, non-Hamas Muslims. And the ‘indomitable heroism’ was immortalized by ‘independent journalists’, including from Hamas, who were broadcasting this live over the internet.
Hamas’s plans were that this massacre was supposed to get all Muslims to rise up and act, imitating these ‘peaceful operations’ throughout Israel and the Middle East, which of course means, to ‘wipe out’ Israel. But this did not happen. Many Muslims, the more civilized ones, maintained far-reaching restraint, while the most civilized Islamic state even officially condemned Hamas’s actions. Israeli Muslims, who are also considered to be ‘Palestinians’ in Islamic propaganda, just as groundlessly as Russian-speaking Ukrainians are called ‘Russians’ in Moscow, demonstrated unwavering loyalty to their country.
Similarities and differences between the attack on Israel and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine
The events of 7 October 2023 were disturbingly similar to the events that took place a year and a half earlier, on 24 February 2022, regarding Russia’s attack on Ukraine. So similar that the suspicion of a common inspiration for these actions strongly arises, although certain differences can be noted.
Although Hamas was even more brutal, cruel and merciless than the Moscow hordes attacking Ukraine, it was also much weaker. However, the victim of the aggression was not Ukraine. This is because, while Ukraine has only just expressed its desire to be a civilized, law-abiding, free-market country, Israel has already been such a country for a long time. Which also directly translates into its military strength.
The Israeli army not only quickly pushed back the Hamas ‘peace activists’ from its territory, but also quickly moved the war to Gaza, methodically destroying Hamas’s military potential there. It should be expected that, after driving Hamas out of Gaza, Israel will not leave it to the mercy of fate and the Islamists again, as it did in 2005, but will manage it long enough to turn it into a country, which is at least more or less civilized, as it has already done with another territory it occupies, namely the West Bank.
What could cause the conflict in the Middle East to escalate?
Wars are taking place in the Middle East and there is no end in sight. Many commentators warn that the war with Hamas could spill over into other areas at any time, involving other Muslim countries which would also like to join the ‘jihad’. In order to examine the possible war future of this region, we will now refer to the mathematical model describing the armies of individual countries of the world, their capabilities and the risks of participating in an armed conflict, which were inferred in the previous articles of this series.
In this model, the value of the strength of individual armies is the market value. The army is worth as much as the money spent on it. Of course, not all money assigned for armaments effectively translates into increased combat strength. As is usually the case, some funds are stolen and wasted along the way. The scale of this waste depends on the level of corruption in the given country, because the condition of the army reflects the condition of the whole country. Ultimately, the strength of the army is the spending on it multiplied by the corruption coefficient, accumulated over the last twelve years.
However, strength alone is not everything. Manoeuvrability is also important. This means how far from their own bases the troops are able to operate and how quickly they can get there. This is described by an indicator referred to as operational capacility, which is equal to strength divided by the number of soldiers in active service. This is because, with equal strength, the army can be either very large but immobile, frequently consisting of unskilled conscripts forced to it, who are unable to even operate the simplest and often dilapidated equipment, or small, but consisting of soldiers who are excellently equipped and trained, with a high degree of morale.
The last parameter of this model is effort, namely the level of a given country’s military spending as a ratio of its total level of production, referred to as gross domestic product – GDP. A level of this spending of more than 5% of GDP already causes noticeable turbulence in the given country’s economy and therefore, if it is not covered to a noticeable extent by foreign aid, it is highly likely that its authorities are arming themselves for a real war. Military spending of more than 10% of GDP turns this probability into certainty, because such a level will inevitably lead a country to ruin.
Unfortunately, when assessing the armed forces of the Middle East, a certain obstacle is encountered. The Stockholm-based institute, SIPRI, the data of which we have been using so far, does not give any data for Hamas and the Gaza Strip, or for such an important country in the region as the United Arab Emirates. However, Hamas’s military potential is quite small on this scale, while, as already emphasized, UAE is the most civilized country in the Middle East after Israel, and this fact alone means that the probability that it will enter into a conflict is low. Unlike before the Industrial Revolution, wars today are started by primitive, backward and corrupt states. And, although this rule, as can be seen in Israel’s case, is not always satisfied, countries that are weaker than the aggressor most frequently fall victim to this.
Therefore, with these limitations, we will now present all the parameters of the Middle Eastern armies, for which complete data is available, on a bubble chart, which has the advantage of being able to illustrate all three parameters of the model simultaneously. The horizontal axis shows the operational capability of the troops – strength divided by the number of soldiers. The vertical axis shows effort, namely the percentage of GDP assigned for military purposes. The strength of individual armies alone is proportional to the area of the bubbles representing them and is given in numerical form in millions of dollars.
Wykres 1. Armie Bliskiego Wschodu – siła i operacyjność
Source: own study based on data from the SIPRI Institute in Stockholm and the Corruption Perception Index (CPI)
Journalists mention Iran as the main threat to Israel and the enemy that will ‘wipe it out’ and create a ‘Free Palestine’ any time soon. However, it can be clearly seen from the chart, even at first glance, that Iran is absolutely no threat to Israel. The Iranian army is not only much weaker than Israeli’s – it has less than an eighth of its strength – but also has negligible operational capability. Its ability to operate far from its own borders is negligible, which, after all, we recently had the opportunity to observe when the Iranian regime attempted to launch a missile attack on Israel. None of the missiles reached its target.
Furthermore, despite all the belligerent rhetoric and verbal aggression, Iran is not seriously preparing for any war with Israel or anyone else, nor does it have any plans for going to war. Its military effort is low for the region, at 2.3% of GDP. After all, all the countries grouped in the lower left-hand corner of the chart are in a similar situation. Even the strongest of the armies of that region – the Turkish army, is much weaker than the Israeli army. Two other countries, which are located slightly higher, but still on the left edge of the chart, the Lebanese and Jordanian armies, despite the considerable effort put into their development, are also weak and not particularly operational.
Interesting things start to happen when we move to the right of the chart, towards greater operational capability. That is where we find the armies of countries that are making a very high armament effort, all of them spending more than 4% of GDP. Israel is also among them. Its effort is even higher than 5%, which is hardly surprising in the case of a country which must be constantly ready to repel the aggression of an enemy that openly threatens the nation with genocide. The fact that this alarming level of armament does not impair the Israeli economy arises from the same mechanism as in the case of Ukraine. Some of this effort, albeit clearly much smaller than in the case of Ukraine, comes from subsidies from its allies, especially the USA.
Which Middle Eastern countries are preparing for war?
Although Israel is the most civilized country in its region, its army does not have the greatest operational capability in the region. The Israeli army, of a rich and developed country, but even so small, is a civic army. The population rises up to directly defend its own homes and families. Although the operational capability of the Israeli army is not the worst in absolute terms, is still greater than that of Poland, but even so, is much lower than could be expected from the level of its civilization.
The opposite is true of the armies of the countries located on the broadly understood Arabian Peninsula. These countries are arming themselves to the teeth, seriously risking the condition of their economies, and therefore the future of their nations. And because, in addition to this, they are rich as a result of their enormous reserves of hydrocarbon deposits, and not very corrupt for Islamic countries, the effects of such armament are truly impressive.
The leader is, of course, the largest of these countries, Saudi Arabia. The Saudi army is not only much more powerful than the Israeli army – it is actually the world’s fifth largest army – but it also has very impressive operational capability. It remains a mystery as to who it will be directed against, because it is almost certain that it will be, with an effort of as much as 8% of GDP.
The same is true of the Omani, Kuwaiti, and – those of countries not shown on the chart because of gaps in the data – the Emirati and Qatari armies. All of them are, if not strong, then at least highly operational and constitute a huge burden on their populations.
Against whom do they intend to wage wars? The obvious target seems to be Israel. Its destruction and the genocide of the Israelis – which is currently within reach of Saudi Arabia’s capabilities – would certainly greatly increase the authority of the Saudis in the Islamic world and give them the position of the undisputed leader of the Muslims. However, there are reasons for doubting this scenario. The countries on the right-hand side of the chart are quite civilized as for Islamic countries. Military disputes – especially with Israel, which will certainly defend itself fiercely, heroically and wisely – even if ultimately victorious, would be very costly. Furthermore, most of the Saudi army’s weapons and equipment come from the U.S., which would certainly not allow them to be used in aggression against Israel.
If the Saudis are not planning to go to battle against Israel, then who? Iran is much weaker than them, more than twenty times weaker. Other than that, it lies across the sea from the Arabian Peninsula, while Saudi Arabia has a rather weak fleet. Saudi Arabia would therefore need to have land access to a potential enemy.
Although it seems quite absurd, after considering all rational arguments, it appears as if these countries are arming themselves… against each other. Indeed, there is no great friendship among this group, while, for example, Qatar’s relations with Saudi Arabia are bad. But are they bad enough to risk such a conflict, the scale of which would far exceed the current war in Ukraine?
For now, the objective of these gargantuan Arab armaments remains a mystery. While, contrary to what is commonly stated by anti-Semitic propaganda, Israel is doing very well and is able to repel any aggression, with the exception of aggression by the Saudis, which is unlikely for reasons other than just the balance of strength.
