It’s a alliance, not imperialism unde any Marxist classification. We have been close since operational desert shield when Iraq invaded Kuwait and we went in to hold Saudi Arabia’s border. They neither control US or Vice Versa.
At that time Saddam used a rather orthodox (then) modern Soviet military structure, with all the little goodies, we hadn’t ever really put (then) modern US tactical systems up against Soviet counterparts outside of proxy wars in the cold war era, and that was mostly light, sometimes mech infantry, might get lucky with some hind helicopters, by groups who rather sucked using them in the three way wars of that era.
We really didn’t know with certainty that we would win or just break even, but smashed them. It is why China then Russia has increasingly abandoned the Soviet model. It really sucks.
While it sucked, both Russia and China have long term experience in fielding armies. It is very complicated, as a unit is more than it’s fighting capacity… a lot of countries when they buy tanks, like Egypt in the 90s, faced expense during training. Most of their training was based on merely getting troops loaded up, driving the damn thing, radio traffic, and driving around in a line by the firing range, and taking turns shooting out older, rusted vehicles on a firing range. If they got real touch, camping overnight for a few days were involved, kissing off tanks and trucks.
Everyone once in a while, US or NATO would come along in war games, we tug along a assortment of NATO or other nations, get everyone used to mass amphibious landings, airborne troops landing at night, helicopters and jets doing the real thing, ships off shore, etc. It stresses out command and tires out the troops, but is a real learning experience, and the officers start to learn how all the pieces can fit together.
This is also when countries start learning their deficiencies, which is a good thing, never a bad thing. Most middle eastern countries learned they had potentially good troops in these events, but they were being used wrong, and the various strengths and weaknesses needed to be networked together.
These countries have a better grasp on warfare intellectually and better equipment than WW1 European and North American Armies, even without planes and tanks. But like them, they were very poorly coordinated and constructed. We didn’t even really get our act together in WW1. It was midway through WW2 that things started to balance out.
At first, we thought just have more Marshall’s (at least Europe thought that) and that’s what the the Arabs thought too till recently. Then in the 30s it was tech centric. Commanders wanted to specialize in certain configurations, there really wasn’t a overarching coordination of how troops were to be used like how we now have TRADOC, and such a group has to be constantly tweaking and testing, can’t just have a group of generals quoting molke and jomini to one another designing stuff. Emoerical driven analysis in both the field and class room is needed, and that is expensive, access to real battle fields- such as observer status in The Spanish Civil War. Better is selling slightly antiquated equipment to factions in such conflicts, train them up and observe in “support”.
It wasn’t ready by time of WW2, Germans didn’t have a response to Frances Defensive line other than go around it (today we would just smash through a modern equivalent, how integrated our various fighting systems are to support one another). They borrowed the idea of Blitzkrieg from a English Fascist, wasn’t unknown in warfare, just wasn’t used as much. Most French commanders didn’t know how to react, air force was poorly fielded, units didn’t link up. It was bizarre.
I would say Saudi Arabia is roughly here in it’s development, or almost there.
Pentagon didn’t cone till later, or the integrated way we mix everything. Germans had a head start on us in developing some of these concepts, but they never really brought it to a level needed to win the war. I think they could of, had that stupid beerhall Nietzschean, not too different from those who pester philosophy sites on the net, got involved and ran the state into the ground.
Russia had a really bag purge in the red army, but Stalin didn’t kill all the officers he had removed, just the top ones. The deep strike doctrine was originally developed during the Russian Civil War under General Trotsky, and the Marxist were the fastest to organize intellectual doctrina and mass training, and had lots of experience moving troops all over. Stalin didn’t, he was a stupid thug. His army was well placed defensively when he purged the army of its top thinkers, had it just stayed put they would of punter Hitler out, for they didn’t know how to set up in Poland, and Hitler would of had to fight the whole Polish army, not just the half. It took years for Stalin to retain his army. Warsaw Pact was a Russian dominated affair, some training together, but always from Russia’s perceived needs to push back a NATO thrust. It did the proxy war stuff like the Chinese, US, and European Reminants, but never had a real test of it’s military. It was the Chinese doing it, or Koreans. Russia just developed silly weapon systems, not much to tie the advanced stuff down to real warfare till the Soviet union went defunct. You should look up their stealth bombers as a example, a real joke. They were trying to reach parity against NATO instead of building their own functional tactical synthesis, and force the integration on a sustainable basis.
Saudi Arabia has decent engineers. It’s pilots… They are getting better. Unless the tech fails, it is application of skill and communication. They have decent special forces. Their military isn’t to the point of mass deployments.
What we are missing however, is the fact they know this. They are told this by us, they know this because they see how much farther they need to go, and actually are pursuing it.
I believe the main reason why Pakistan was hesitant to join into the war in Yemen wasn’t because they feel strongly they only deploy internationally for UN Peacekeeping missions, but rather, those are the only missions it can pull off. It knows the UN will bail them out if shit hits the fan, they have access in the field to higher echelons they normally wouldn’t get to experience unless invited into war games with the US or China.
It can barely hold Islamabad. We look at it gratefully for protecting Bin Laden and buddying up with the Taliban. It didn’t have much of a choice from it’s perspective. Those groups are a threat that it can’t do. Oetentky tackle, whenever it advances it’s military, the Taliban gets the same skills. Those groups have a lot if sympathy and get tipped off constantly, and command can’t do much, even with the best Intel handed to them. So they just send them after other targets- US, or India. Notice they next to never fuck with China- the border region over the Black Pass is all military training grounds.
Libya- Libya was always a joke, and we didn’t exactly help them out in killing off Qaddafi. What makes it worst, Qatar and Dubai have been bombing tribes attacking one another, so suddenly tribal groups both had premier air support. It is a nasty mess.
Egypt was the most advanced Arab State, it survived being wrongfully isolated by Obama for justly attacking the Islamic Brotherhood. It is looking like Hillary will be president, so they are likely to accept Putin’s offer to lease a Naval Base in Egypt.
ISIS in the Sinai operate similar to Mexican Drug Cartels. They smuggle drugs and weapons along smuggler routes, Egypt has about as much success. They have the top engineers of any Islamic Nation today, even more impressive than Morocco or Iraq, while Iraq has the most.
Oman and other small states operate similar to the the Italian City States of the Renaissance, contracting military companies to fulfill infantry, both foot and convoy operations. Kuwait tends to hire out anyone and everyone to do menial labour, but invest it’s citizens heavily into the National Guard. They are from what I’ve seen actually of slightly better quality than our own.
Iraq went the path of setting up one really advanced company, recruited from the best- fully kitted out, well trained, and they were the mobile heavies for far weaker and more poorly trained Iraqi Armies and farsical Iraqi Police, who played a army role in parallel, but never were properly supplied.
Think of it as a cell, weak membrane, but strong nucleas. Obviously, the goal was to constantly transition more and more to that status. Obama wasn’t able to handle the politics he and the left engineered during the Iraq War, departed as the country was still in shitshape. It fell apart fast, it was mostly the dedication of troops placed in areas well designed by the coalition, who got good training that held- like I said, my batralion’s old A Company outpost stopped the ISIS advance from Falluja and Ramadi into Iskandariya, I was able to figure that much out from news reports, and many of those more advanced infantry units were still in active use, I’ve seen them photographed a lot.
Honestly, some Kurd Units are more advanced than my company was, I was looking at a photo for a Humvee wedge vehicle, was very impressed how they continued to evolve it. I’m not too confident head to head we would win without backup in a company on company basis.
Kurds in Syria have made some real strides. They had a lot of excellent blacksmiths, and made use of them, retrofitting random vehicles, including a bus straight out if the A Team TV Show (I pity the fool) with heavy armor while we were bombing Kobane, and got to the point of launching armored counter strikes on their own. That is impressive.
As the Arab Leave evolves it us naturally going to gravitate towards diversifying it’s weapons, never just US or European or Chinese and Russian- it will have it’s own weapon system standards, likely 55.7 caliber so they can shoot ours (5.56), but we can’t shoot theirs sort of thinking, with 5.56 versions available for export. Their airforces could easily be integrated, already are. Training, quality weapons, sending our drones for surveillance or reliable spotters, that takes time, not everyone will be on board. Your military is only as strong as the weakest essential component. You can have the best of a lot of things, but is something doesn’t just fit right, it is going to slow everything down.