02:10 The New Generation / Saudi Arabia & UAE 10:44 Sultan in crisis / Turkey 16:35 Iranian Dilemmas / Iran 21:19 Israel and the Syrian Triangle / Israel 23:05 Arab Spring 2.0 26:05 Outro
The Theory asserts that the poor performance of Arab armies in battle is caused by culturally-regular behavior and patterns of thought among Arab military personnel, particularly junior officers. It focuses on a number of particular traits which sociologists, anthropologists, and political psychologists of the Middle East agree are salient elements of the dominant Arab culture.
Promotion of conformity with group norms over innovation and independent thinking.
Promotion of a rather extreme deference to authority which discourages initiative among subordinates.
Promotion of avoidance at all costs, of shame -- discouraging an individual from accepting responsibility and encouraging the manipulation of information to conceal shameful acts.
Promotion of fierce loyalty to the group which encourages individuals to shield friends and relatives from from shame and reinforces the emphasis on conformity.
Regarding manual labor as shameful, and considering technical and scientific work as a form of manual labor.
Arab CultureTheory predicts that these patterns of culturally-regular behavior will produce identical patterns of behavior on the battlefield which are crippling to Arab armies and air forces. These patterns of military ineffectiveness can be boiled down to four pervasive problems:
Militaries display severe problems with tactical leadership. Junior officers demonstrate little initiative, creativity, flexibility, or capacity for independent action in combat. Thus ground and air forces appear incapable of fighting maneuver battles or improvising ad hoc operations in the heat of battle.
Militaries suffer paralysis due to poor information flows. Junior officers and enlisted personnel regularly dissemble, exaggerate, obfuscate, and lie to conceal mistakes and unpleasant news, no matter how large or small.
Military personnel possess very limited technical skills. As a result, armed forces can rarely take full advantage of their weapons and equipment.
Because Arab technicians do not understand how to properly care for sophisticated machinery, militaries have difficulty maintaining their equipment. Few military operators understand the need for constant preventive maintenance. [Rather than addressing the problem, militaries blame the suppliers.]
This was dominated by the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. Vladimir Putin and his "special military operation" were discussed by most of the speakers but he was not invited and did not attend. The consensus was that the world was tense and fractured as the West also faced confrontation with China and an indifferent global South.
During multiple panel discussions, the Vice President of Colombia Francia Márquez and the Foreign Minister of Brazil Mauro Vieira, concurred in their condemnation of the Russian aggression, but also stated their opposition to a further militarisation of the conflict. Márquez called for a new world order, centering life and not militarisation, while Vieira stated that it is necessary to work step by step towards a negotiated settlement in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.
The Munich Security Conference (MSC; Münchner Sicherheitskonferenz) is an annual conference on international security policy that has been held in Munich, Bavaria, Germany since 1963. Formerly named the Munich Conference on Security Policy (Münchner Konferenz für Sicherheitspolitik), the motto is: Peace through Dialogue. It is the world's largest gathering of its kind.
About 80% of the population are Black South Africans. The remaining population consists of Africa's largest communities of European (White South Africans), Asian (Indian South Africans and Chinese South Africans), and multiracial (Coloured South Africans) ancestry. South Africa is a multiethnic society encompassing a wide variety of cultures, languages, and religions. Its pluralistic makeup is reflected in the constitution's recognition of 12 official languages, the fourth-highest number in the world. According to the 2011 census, the two most spoken first languages are Zulu (22.7%) and Xhosa (16.0%). The next two are of European origin: Afrikaans (13.5%) developed from Dutch and serves as the first language of most Coloured and White South Africans; English (9.6%) is commonly used in public and commercial life, both reflect the legacy of Dutch and British colonialism, respectively.
00:00 Europe's Strategic Weaknesses 00:45 ad 01:54 Europe's Main Geopolitical Weaknesses in Continental Europe 05:00 Eastern Europe strategic value for the EU and Russia 08:39 European Union Interests in the Caucasus 10:16 Europe in the Caucasus 11:01 The Importance of Central Asian Fossil Fuels 15:09 Europe interests in Africa 20:24 Europe in the Arctic 24:58 Europe's 5 main areas of interest
