Posted on 07/08/2015 6:41:27 AM PDT by C19fan
In an anarchical system like international relations, military power is the ultimate form of currency. A state may have all the culture, art, philosophy, and glitter and glory in the world, but it’s all for naught if the country doesn’t have a powerful military to defend itself. Mao Zedong put it bluntly when he stated: “power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Of all the types of military power, armies are arguably the most important for the simple fact that people live on land, and are likely to continue doing so in the future. As the famous political scientist John J. Mearsheimer has noted: “Armies, along with their supporting air and naval forces, are the paramount form of military power in the modern world.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalinterest.org ...
Perhaps Overrated: Red Army. Brute force with no regards for casualties. Although some of their campaigns late in the war, for example, the invasion of Manchuria, were well planned, executed, and with speed and power.
Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun. Ruthless and destructive without comparison. Joshua’s army was pretty mean too.
The Red Army had very few good generals. Commissars hamstrung the leadership. If the German Army hadn’t surrendered at Stalingrad because of Hitler’s dumb order, the war might have lasted longer in the East.
The Western allies would have crushed the Red Army if they had fought.
They left out the Persian Army of the Achaemenid period.
I am almost finished reading the third volume of the Churchill biography by Manchester/Reid and came across this. As the Red Army savagely raped and pillaged its way to Berlin, one of Tito's associates, Milovan Djilas, expressed his dismay over the behavior of the Soviets. Stalin replied: "You have imagined the Red Army to be ideal, and it is not ideal, nor can it be...we have opened up our penitentiaries and stuck everybody in the army". So, yes, it was an army of thugs led by thugs who didn't care what happened to the enemy or their own soldiers. Heck, the more of his own people that were lost in the war meant that many less for Stalin ro purge or send to the Gulag.
**Joshua’s army was pretty mean too.**
Joshua had a great commander-in-chief!
The Soviets were at the end of the rope on manpower in 1945. Teenage boys started to appear in the ranks.
You may want to re-read some history. The Ruskies had a number of very effective generals.
I’m surprised that the Greeks weren’t mentioned since they really wre the first to show that heavy infantry with high moral are capable of toppling any force not armed with firearms. They were the example the Roman Armies imitated. And every European Army until guns made it impossible to sustain such forces.
Also, why the Ottomans?
How about the seventh-century Arab armies that overran Persia, North Africa, Syria and Anatolia?
Quantity has a quality of its own. Their outrageously high casualty numbers are proof of the poor leadership of the Red Army.
They had some good generals but so many of the best of the officer corps were purged on the 1930’s.
Ask the Mamelukes who fought them at Cairo in 1517 or the Christians who fought them at Kosovo, Nicopolis or Mohács.
Obama FSA could pillage any country in no time flat...
If not held back, the Third Army would have rolled through Berlin months ahead of the Russians and then would have turned west and rolled over much of Russia as well, had they been ordered so.
The list did have the US Army in general.
OK, I see it now - at the very end. The article was poorly formatted.
The Persian forces of the Sassanian Empire, which at one point ruled just about everything between China and the Nile River might be a candidate, as might the eighteenth-century army of Nadir Shah, which conquered everything in its path.
As were we...
Regards,
I'd agree with three on this list, but I'd also have a bigger list. :') Thanks C19fan.
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