The Civil War in Libya

Kurt said:

Only small Balkan nations have a memory of past Ottoman power. The sick man of the Bosporus is the more present picture and the Turkish army is not considered a serious threat. Turkey is considered a weak country by European standards and a strong country by Middle Eastern standards. Greece on her own is considered enough to counterbalance any Turkish aspirations and that's at the core of the problem. Greece has been defined as Europe's birthplace in reference to the ancient Greeks. Culturally there's little difference between Greece and Turkey except for religion. That makes their struggle so bitter because they are so hard to distinguish. Cyprus is a prime example how many European regulations were bent or broken in order to integrate some Greeks and disintegrate some Turks. It's the Western World eminating from the Greek struggle against Persia and Christian club narrative that shapes widespread prejudices against Turkey while for Russia, theirs is the old problem of separating Europe and Asia. Similar to Greece and Turkey no clearcut boundary exists, so minor differences get overemphasized to serve political prejudices of a great part of the populations.

I agree that Turkey can build her own clout without the EU, but I consider it a pity that they aren't being offered a fair deal because Turkey has a very important softpower in the Islamic and Turkish Central Asian world. I don't agree that the Islamic world has the capability to achieve yet an economic clout that would make it an equal to Europe or China. The problem is the systemic weakness of social cooperation that allows and allowed undemocratic structures to rule these countries. As long as tribal afiliation and a long list of past wrongs count so much only a few bright lighthouses like Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia will exist.

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asif iqbal said:

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with all due respect Kurt, calling Turks and Greeks the same defines how much you know about the topic

Turkey a weak nation compared to Europeans?? do you know Turkish defence budget??

Turkey is one of the largest contributor to Nato, its airforce alone has over 60,000 active personnel, comparing to Greece? who have been begging EU for loans after loans

Turkey is a frontline world power and its projects all home grown will make sure it stays there in the coming decades

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Kurt said:

I've been to Greece and Turkey, I've grown up with Greeks and Turks and served with Greek and Turkish soldiers, so I'm rather less ignorant than you. Turkey has almost the same population size as Germany and 20% of the already low military spending of Germany spread over almost three times the soldiers. That's a militia, not a professional military and they are no serious threat for anyone in Europe because they wouldn't be able to get past Greece or Bulgaria on the defense. I agree that the Turks are more than capable to defend their homeland or strike south and they do have some good units they can send abroad. However, I would consider Turkey more of a frontline power than Pakistan (that is roughly on the same military level as Sweden), irrespective of the nuclear card (a most useless weapon today, mostly useful for ego reasons, as Mao correctly stated) because Turkish soldiers do have a better educational background to make their equipment work and more money to invest into good equipment with good careers awaiting trained military technicians in a booming economy (complete antithesis to Pakistan).

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Kurt said:

The EU-Islamic world relation is more complicated, there's the Mediterranean Union and there are some cooperations like with Marocca that is on an organizational level integrated into the European railway net. The problem with Turkey is Greece and the Greek clout in Europe. The Euro crisis will likely break Greek political influence, while for Turkey it's most interesting what comes after the AKP. It would be very hard to deny seculars the entry into Europe especially if they use the European aspiration to fight Islamism like the AKP used the European aspiration to dismantle the military "junta". Criticism of Turkey seems to be correct that neither the AKP are most democratic, a very important qualification for Europe, nor did they introduce full religious liberties for non-Muslims. So I'm not convinced Turkey will stay out forever, but it will need a stable return of secular rule with the AKP filling a transitional role and continuing on much diminished power. The AKP has such a strong support not for her religious connections, but her decidedly positive economic policies.

Lybia in between Egypt and Tunis ensures a democratic heart of the Arabian and Muslim world that has aspired to democracy out of own choice with their own struggle. Such a narrative is most important because it lacks in Iraq as well as Afghanistan. These nations expected democracy to deliver instead of seeing it as a way to better organize their community and nation. So Lybia has been a most important battle for the West from a geostrategic point of view in order to spread the systemic approach of the West, although many are uncomfortable with the role the moral imperative Islam plays in the politics of these new democracies. It's considered unlikely that real democracies will fight each other, but rather bandwaggon against non-democrats with Finland being the exception. Syria is not yet ripe and would be too difficult in the current situation to handle as well as being the playground for the Turks to reestablish their regional power as well as a new purpose for their revered armed forces. This democracies bandwaggoning idea is most likely familiar to Chinese military planners and is one of the new world-of-peers influences that transformed the old Western Pacific.

The Lybian civil war is quite noteable because it did include tribal conflict along the lines most Arab nations expect things to run along. Tunisia and Egypt by contrast don't have these tribal divisions. So the civil war in Lybia holds for all interested parties many lessons how the traditional tribal societies of the Arab countries can be divided and if they can build something different from a top tribe subjugating the others (indeed an ancient system of gouvernance) or something as fragile as the Lebanon.

---------- Post added at 12:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:17 PM ----------



I've been to Greece and Turkey, I've grown up with Greeks and Turks and served with Greek and Turkish soldiers, so I'm rather less ignorant than you. Turkey has almost the same population size as Germany and 20% of the already low military spending of Germany spread over almost three times the soldiers. That's a militia, not a professional military and they are no serious threat for anyone in Europe because they wouldn't be able to get past Greece or Bulgaria on the defense. I agree that the Turks are more than capable to defend their homeland or strike south and they do have some good units they can send abroad. However, I would consider Turkey more of a frontline power than Pakistan (that is roughly on the same military level as Sweden), irrespective of the nuclear card (a most useless weapon today, mostly useful for ego reasons, as Mao correctly stated) because Turkish soldiers do have a better educational background to make their equipment work and more money to invest into good equipment with good careers awaiting trained military technicians in a booming economy (complete antithesis to Pakistan).

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Equation said:

Wow, so you served in both Greek and Turkish army?

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Kurt said:

It's called NATO, so we meet soldiers from other countries during joint operations and do ourselves joint operations in other countries. Turkey and Greece are both members and many Turks and Greeks decide to do their military service neither in the Turkish nor Greek forces, but in the German army because they think the Turkish and the Greek army suck.
I made a slight mistake in comparing the military spending. In essence Turkey spents 10% per soldier compared to the German spending for example that is already quite low for a European power, thus making Germany not a great, but a middle power. Add some expensive ships to that and you have a military mostly armed with cheap rifles and hardly a secure communication.
Turkey is similar to Poland by having a large and cheap conscript army and some elite forces to sent on all NATO tasks in foreign lands, like Afghanistan. The Turkish soldiers can be quite good if they have the good training any soldier needs to be good. However, they are on a disadvantage because of their educational system that is not as cutting edge as that of the prime European nations. Still, Turkey is making great strides forward and you shouldn't mistake central Anatolian backwardness as significant because Istanbul and Izmir are the real population and progress centers. Singapore and Israel are two closely related conscript militaries that profit a lot from their excellent educational system that enhances the capabilities of training citizens on the tasks of being soldiers. I would count Turkey from a military perspective equal to Israel and ahead of Greece and Bulgaria, as well as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan. The problem is that you need an advantage for an attack and Greece has a very good navy that can defend against Turkey, but would be hopelessly outmatched if they tried to invade Turkey and reclaim the lands they lost to Turkey during their last war.
If you are familiar with Greek and Turkish history, both layed claim on being the successor of the Roman and Byzantine Empire. The term Hellenic and Ottoman/Turkish developed as a political ploy to create differences between each other that didn't exist except for religion and consecutive treatment by the Sultan's gouvernment and the foreign powers that needed a narrative to divide this land and serve their own global interests.

Sweden maintained her neutrality and territorial integrity against the Warsaw Pact. Indian threats are a joke in comparison. The Soviet Army just devoted 20% of her forces against China during the Sino-Soviet split, the power that had bested India on all battlefields.
While Pakistan has a large professional force and Sweden has mostly a conscript force, you neglect the aspect of force multipliers and of skills. Sweden has a very powerful navy and air force as well as highly skilled ski units (with hunting and skiing being widespread pasttimes making these soldiers very well trained). The purpose of both Sweden and Pakistan is to defend their homeland and I consider both equally capable of that. The large standing army of Pakistan would be off-set by a Swedish mobilization for which they have the wealth and a very long tradition as most excellent soldiers equal to any professional. Sweden lost her great power status as a result of manpower shortage while fighting Russia, but she still must be consider a middle power with an outstanding tradition of producing effective and cheap military hardware. That sets off Pakistan's use of US and Chinese designs that don't deliver as much punch for the money because US weapon exports are generally overpaid and Chinese weapons are worth their money, but can't yet compete, because of hard- and software restrictions, with Western designs, so they rather share a market with Russia and try to take the lower part of it in many fields (because of engine troubles for example). Additionally, it's always hard to modify imported military hardware if you don't have access to all blueprints. So Sweden has a great benefit by her international connections, while Pakistan's balance between China and the US makes their full access to US blueprints difficult.
So I rank Turkey, Israel and Singapore as strong middle powers with great regional influence and Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi-Arabia and Iran as weaker middle powers with much less regional influence with Pakistan, Iran and Egypt being more on the military level of Sweden that just as well made a powerful statement of her ability of self-defense that was one of the reasons of the Soviets abandoning the idea of controlling the entrance of the Baltic Sea and taking a much higher toll of ship maintenance by building up Murmansk.
The Pakistani nuclear armament is a sign of weakness (similarly the Israeli nuclear armament was designed after the improving fighting capabilities of their neighbours) because a strong nation today (like Brazil, Turkey or South Africa) is satisfied with theoretical nuclear capability as long as there's no imminent nuclear threat pointed at them. And India has adopted Chinese second strike doctrine with the nuclear arsenal being an expensive prestige project. That leads to the problem of Pakistan being a wannabe-great power that has clouded your vision. There's only one Muslim country that comes close to being a great power and that is Turkey. But they still have a long way to go, although they do some pretty good marching. By comparison the problem with Pakistan is the significant lack of positions of employment for tech-savvy soldiers. Thus the professional army rather serves as a tool in order to prolong a senseless struggle with India and keep a junta in power and profiting. Bangladesh, former Eastern Pakistan, was quick to realize these goals and drop out.

Lybia is an example of a country that has tribal divisions that serve as entities with or without power affiliation and has a ruling dictator who tried for decades to trigger the inner tensions towards outwards and foreign objectives while deciding on how much oil wealth went into services or weapons for whom. The country thus lacked real development and curbed ambitions until the ambitious organized and set off a more or less organized coup d'etat to dispose of the former officer who came into power by a coup d'etat.
This narrative could happen in most Arab countries because they just work along these lines, so a working Lybia will be a systemic threat to the totalitarian systems surpressing Arabia, while a failure wouldn't result in great shockwaves because the country is so small.
Pakistan is a Muslim, but not Arabic country, so the tribal lessons are to a lesser extend applicable, but the Turkish progress will sooner or later also change this nation by example and create a more sophisticated economy and education system that will greatly uplift your military power.
The way to go is not necessarily copying all political institutions from the West. China or Singapore (15% Muslim!) hold pretty good lessons on how to organize a capitalism that works for economic growth and progress along organized lines with little disturbance through political infighting.

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Kurt said:

No, I speak only little Greek and Turkish. All NATO soldiers can talk to each other in English and there are enough Greeks and Turks who speak German.

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