The Arab nations are a military failure. Even though countries like S.A. spend insane amounts of money on purchasing Western equipment, that does not automatically mean they have switched to the Western doctrine.
Countries like Egypt and Iraq were set up with the Soviet doctrine and I haven't seen any proof yet of them changing that.
With Western equipment comes Western doctrine. It is practically impossible to use a different doctrine, as former WP nations are discovering since they joined NATO.
The Arab nations also started switching but face many difficulties. For one, the standard of recruit is not high enough to maintain the high-tech Western equipment which is why so many Westerners are still involved. Another problem is cultural. There is a famous example of an American instructor teaching an Arab officer how to maintain a weapons system, expecting that officer to then teach and supervise his men. The officer didn't do that however because it would diminish his value and importance if his men also knew what to do. As long as he was the only man in the battalion who knew how to maintain the equipment, his position was secured.....
I made the M-E and Gulf War comparisons to compare doctrine, not equipment or numbers. I agree it's an unfair comparison if I'd compare them without taking into account the force-difference between Allies/Iraqis. By comparing their doctrine, you can still make a (much) more honest comparison. Besides, even during GWI and II there were battles between comparable amount of forces and even the results were pretty much the same as without numerical superiority.
see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_73_Easting
No, you can't. A NATO force would not have had the same advantages/force multipliers as the Desert Storm/Eternal Crusaders had when facing the WP in Europe. NATO expected to run out of aircraft after 40 days of combat (IIRC) at which point the Soviets would have had air dominance. And Soviet/WP units would have had a proper SAM umbrella as well as their own (probably low tech yet still effective) C3 and counter C3 gadgets. During Desert Storm/Eternal Crusaders, the West ruled the battlefield because Saddam's army was obsolete. It had a lot of tanks but not the additional stuff you need to field a proper force (a mistake many third world countries make).
AFAIK the Western counter-insurgency tactics are second to none.
That is, as long as you have morals and ethics on the battlefield and care about what civilians (in any country) think about you.
That would depend on what you consider effective. I agree that Western powers do try to limit civilian casualties as that plays poorly on national TV but enough civilians get killed for them to fail to see the difference. More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died. That's more than during Saddam's reign of terror. And no end is yet in sight. Nobody even knows how many Afghans have died because the US can't be arsed to find out, probably because they are afraid it would lead to bad press. Every year, America claims the situation is under control in Iraq and Afghanistan and that their (latest) counter-insurgency plan is working. Yet the attacks continue and central authority has not been established. It would seem that American troops mostly huddle in heavily defended bases and use firepower to keep the insurgents off them (reminds me of Vietnam). They are not winning, probably not even containing the problem.
When was that last put to the test? Are you seriously giving the East Front as an example of the superiority of the Soviet system over the current-day Western one???
I doubt it's even honest to name the German doctrine and the Western one in one sentence, let alone see them as one and the same.
IMHO the last comparison between Western doctrine and Soviet doctrine was in Afghanistan. I assume the conventional army the Afghan alliance had was Soviet in doctrine?
I suggest you look up NATO doctrine and its history. It is indeed based on the German tactics used on the Eastern Front as that was the only available data regarding fighting the russians. Many German generals cooperated in this, even giving workshops and joining in wargames. At a tactical level, the Germans were often capable of beating the Russians. They overstated this and blamed Hitler for every defeat. But that doesn't explain some major defeats, also on the local/tactical level.
As to the German/Western system, most Western armies copied the German system during WWII (combined arms/battle groups) and the German "auftrags" tactics instead of their own "orders" tactics and more formal organizations. This trend only accelerated after WWII when the threat of the Soviets was understood.
Afghanistan certainly wasn't a clash between both systems. It was the Soviet army fighting an insurgency, supported by some American arms and money. Unless you are suggesting the Western model consists of semi-civilized tribesmen armed with Kalashnikovs and Stingers fighting in mountainous terrain.
I don't understand you anymore. Do you agree a small professional force can beat a numerical superior qualitatively lower force or not?
Yes, as long as the numbers remain small enough.
10 Western soldiers (squad) can probably defeat 100 Russian conscripts.
100 Western soldiers (company) can probably defeat 1000 Russian conscripts.
1000 Western soldiers (strong battalion) will probably not be able to defeat 10,000 Russian conscripts as divisional support weapons increase their combat power.
Anyways, the point is moot; Russia can't afford to put large amounts of conscript armies in the field any more, even if they have all the money in the world. The Russian population is half the American one.
Only up to certain point. The core value of a conscript army is the willingness to go for total war, e.g. the use of all national resources. I am sure Russia would have considerably less problems raising a large army and sending it to war than a Western nation. Would America have been able to continue its war on terrorism if it had a conscript army? If everyone ran the risk of going to Afghanistan or Iraq instead of the just the poor?
Why wouldn't I be Dutch?
Although it's ofcourse very popular to be Dutch, so I could understand other nation's people trying to impersonate as us.
Your example is the proof for my point; we chose for small amounts of high quality troops. We tried untrained conscripts in 1940 and it didn't work that good...
The fact that the Dutch forces are abysmal small compared to anything, especially compared to the Russian forces, is no proof the Soviet doctrine is better.
And as early posters remarked; the Centurions would have done nicely against secondline troops.
Hold your horses, no insult was intended. Just because you are named Flying Dutchman doesn't automatically mean you're Dutch. Bill Nighy isn't
Your example however is badly flawed. The Netherlands indeed had a somewhat large but poorly trained and equipped force in 1940. It didn't do so well, partly because Dutch soldiers were not conditioned for all out war. The only troops to really fight hard were the marines in Rotterdam. But had the Dutch formed an alliance with Belgium, France and the UK and formed a unified defense, it would undoubtedly have done much better.
After WWII, it did not opt for a small force of high quality soldiers. It had national conscription and no elite forces to speak of, except for some commandos. The only difference was it did get some good equipment although usually not enough to equip both the standing troops and the reserves.