Top Ten Armies of today

If you take into account numbers and equipment then Britain is well down on the list.

 

Yes in the numbers game the British are low on the list. But in the quality of their equipment and material's, they're in the top 3.

KBO

 

AFAIK "winning hearts and minds" was a phrase used in the Vietnam war.
It was a silly idea then and remains so. Armies are not good at nor should they be trained for such a mission. The two missions are incompatible.
For example in Bosnia the UN troops (peace keepers) allowed the Serb forces to walk into their compound and remove their armor and heavy weapons without resisitance of any kind. They were too busy "winning hearts and minds" to bother with a nasty, brutal thing like putting up a fight. As to whether the peacekeeping forces you mention are capable of winning a war, we simply don't know. They have not been called on to do so for over half a century and the world has changed a lot in that time.

 

Actually I doubt there is much an army can do about winning hearts and minds even if they're good at it. Either you have the support of the population in your military action, or you don't. Basically that's the only real, modern justification for armed interference; if you need to win hearts and minds after the actual military intervention then the intervention itself was a really bad idea, if not simply uncalled for (literally).

However, this type of action is what the UN does: trying to keep the two warring sides apart and at peace as much as possible. It involves rallying the support of the population, and that needs to be done by that same military personell that is trying to keep the peace. I'd say it's harder than anything any army has ever needed to do.

 

If you don't have the hearts of the population it is very hard to win it, but if they support you it is eay to to lose it.

 

Right...

There is a difference between having a proven capacity for violence and being effective in combat. The Kray twins had a proven capacity for violence, but I would not like them to be guarding my back. When the German army was increased in size after 1933 they refused to allow the SA (men with a proven capacity for violence) in, because a rabble of thugs is not good material for an army.

First used in the Malaysian 'Emergency' by the British. A very similar situation to Vietnam (Communist infiltrators within the population - and backed by China - trying to overthrow the Government. Britain fought the infiltrators and were nice to the population. A 'Hearts & Minds' Campaign. And we won.
How many other guerilla forces have been so well defeated?

I do agree that troops used constantly in a 'peacekeeping' role will lose their fighting 'edge'.

 

The “Hearts and Minds” phrase is certainly catchy, but is probably an oversimplification.

I agree in some respects that if a military operation is launched without the support of the local populace it is probably a bad idea to begin with, however it is worth pointing out that military operations are not always launched for the best interests of the local populace.

“Hearts and Minds” should be an important part of any military venture, winning them is only part of it, the really important part is keeping them on side and that’s where things most often fall down.

A good example would be the Ukraine during Barbarossa. There the Germans had the Hearts and Minds of a great deal of the population from the outset, they were sick of Stalinism and thought any change would be a change for the better. Very quickly the Germans blew that advantage, mainly due to Nazi ideology.

I think any notion that Soldiers are somehow inherently unsuited to Peacekeeping and Hearts and Minds operations is broadly untrue, unless you assume that all soldiers are programmed through their training to become single minded obsessive killing machines with all the emotions of a robot. They’re not, many have wives and children of their own, most have families back home, so they can relate to the civilians they meet, if they are reasonably well led, prepared and given some additional training.

Yes, Peacekeeping can dull the effectiveness of a fighting unit, the same can be said of Garrison duty, or even peacetime in general, all are an important part of the duties of any modern UN Armed force though, and the soldiers should be trained accordingly.

Apart from that, going into a military venture with the Hearts and Minds of the civilians is the best option, winning the Hearts and Minds of a sceptical or even hostile populace is difficult but not impossible, but winning back the Hearts and Minds if you had them to begin with and lost them is the most difficult task facing any occupying force. Forty years ago the British lost the Hearts and Minds of the Northern Irish Republicans, and they still don’t trust us.

 

The Dutch won several guerilla wars in the Netherlands Indies, but not exactly by winning the hearts and minds of the population.

 

....which means that they haven't really won those guerilla wars.

The same can be said about France in the algerian war.
Here too the french army militarily defeated the algerian rebells, but the means France used to achieve this, ensured that always more and more algerians supported the rebells.

It is part of the guerilla tactic to force the occupying army to use more and more violence ans so to make sure more and more parts of the population turn against them.

In such a situation, very few armies have ever found the right "middle way" between only winning hearts and using exagerated violence.

 

Must I say this again : look at canada's achievements , look at what canada can do : canada's army is seriously under-rated , if any of you get the Outdoor Life Network (OLN) there's a show called "Truth, Duty, Valour" watch it and you'll see the real canadian army. There the envy of many modern armies (EX: Usa , Uk , South Africa)

http://www.forces.ca/

 

Ricky wrote:

I'm well aware of the difference which is why I said it was the minimum requirement, not that it was all that is required.
I try to choose my words carefully when posting please do not disregard any of them when reading my posts.

 

There may well be a confusion here, but people without any proven capacity for violence have beome good soldiers (take WW2, or any other time where conscription was used). A minimum requirement for a soldier is surely more that he will obey any order, even when said order is to run at a machine gun and bayonet the gun crew to death. Oh, and that he can stay alive in combat... And have loyalty to his mates.

 

Some did become good soldiers and some did not. My comment was on; who do you want watching your back? In that situation one does not want one's life to depend upon an unknown quantity. That is where the proven part of the comment comes in. As to the capacity for violence that is the bare minimum requirement is for a combat soldier. Training, loyalty and obedience are part of the equation however if one had well trained, obedient, loyal girl scouts opposing a Marine Regiment or an SS unit..well..I know who I'm putting my money on

 

So what you mean is that the basic requirement for the person you'd want to watch your back is that he is able, psychologically and physically, to hurt the human being who is trying to hurt you. Am I right?

I think those two things are generally put in a person by military training.

 

Of course.

I have experienced a significant amount of military training, from several different perspectives and witnessed or been a part of training of other branches and even other countries soldiers.
Entire texts have been devoted to the subject and I cannot expound much on it here, however training alone is insufficient to make a warrior.
The warrior culture is not a term of my invention. If one reads extensively on military subjects it will be discussed in greater detail.
You can take the best trained soldiers in the world and if they do not possess the will and motivation to fight then they are basically useless for war.
Perhaps they can be used as peacekeeping troops.."winning the hearts and minds" and all that rot

 

If some S soldiers keep shooting on everything that moves, even when injured the people will hate them more and more, because remember that the IRaqi people only see brutal soldiers kill innocent people, whereas these ''brutal'' soldiers have been in that shit for many monds so they shoot on anything if they even think its a treath, but thats what happens if you put a soldier on a shithole like Iraq for several monds, still they have to behave professional, most of them do that, but when 1 soldier starts shooting at civilians (because he lost his mind and thinks the civilians he is shooting at form a thread) al his fellow squadmates start shooting, thats the bad thing about them, they are just a little bit to ''trigger-happy''

 

Ah, with you - you mean somebody whom you know to be a good/effective soldier.
I agree!

 

Jeffrey wrote:

If you explored the facts rather than be taken in by anti-American propaganda you would learn that the American forces go to extreme lengths to prevent civilian casualties. They will still occur. Whenever you have insurgent and terrorist forces mixed in with the civilian population these incidents will occur. They are not wilful or intentional and in the rare instances where they are the military will investigate and punish those responsible. In no military conflict in history have so comparatively few civilian casualties occured. I'm referring to the documented cases not to the imaginary numbers thrown around by leftist and Islamic groups who have a political ax to grind.

 

I think what Jeffrey is referring to here is the case of the Dutch soldier Erik O. who fired his gun to try to control a crowd and accidentally killed one of the unarmed civilians among them. He was trialed but found innocent because his judgment of the threat presented by the crowd was accurate and he was in a situation to justify his gunfire; what followed was unintentional.

 

But there are always those who will seize upon such an incident and fan the flames as hard as they can, screaming "massacre" and "atrocity" at the top of their lungs, cheerfully aided and abetted by the media. The episode of the Italian journalist is a case in point. The car containing the Italians was driving on the airport road, scene of many attacks on US troops, travelling at high speed, usually a sure sign of a suicide attack, and had not told American authorities at any level that they were taking that road. Furthermore, all signals to stop from the troops at the checkpoint, including warning shots, were totally ignored. Yet this Communist woman actually has had the unmitigated gall to publicly say that she believes that the troops were deliberately trying to kill her, because she had been freed through the payment of a ransom, something which the US government opposes. I have this to say: If the troops had really been trying to nail your hide to the barn door, lady, you would be in a body bag right now! It was a tragic, unfortunate occurence, and my heart does go out to the family of the dead Italian agent, but to call it an assassination attempt only goes to show you that Communists can still come up with idiotic ways to distort the facts.