81–90 of 140 posts
i wonder how countries with mandatory military service deal with gun control for people after their mandatory military service is over.
During military service, you're typically not home with service weapons. You're stationed wherever you're receiving training, and that's where weapons remain.
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How convenient to "forget" "western" factors and blame everyone else instead.
This one was not caused by west in any way. West joined way later. Oh, and you conveniently ignore Russian factor too - they were the ones targeting hospitals and ranking up civilian causalities as a strategy.
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I think that their martial discipline and military life style is what they are famous for. Again, I think that the failure of the effectiveness of their of their military training simply shows that in war there are a lot of factors. Sth that can be seen even in our times, the US effectively lost in Vietnam or Iraq even though their military was far superior.
You take for granted that the Spartans were good at war, and reconcile "Spartans good at war" and "Spartans lost to other city-states" by concluding that there are "a lot of factors". Why not revise your assumption that Spartans were good at war?
It also doesn't really make much sense to say that Sparta's reliance on its elite core lead to its eventual subordination to Macedonia. Macedon under Philip and Alexander was also built around an elite core -- the Companion Cavalry supported by the sarissa-armed infantry, which were relatively lightly armored compared to traditional Athenian/Spartan heavy infantry. It also doesn't really make that much sense to try to draw clear ethical distinctions between the Macedonians and the Spartans. One of the most common lines to read in the Campaigns of Alexander is "all the men remaining in the city were killed, and then the women and children were sold into slavery."
What's clear is that Spartans gained the reputation for having the most elite heavy infantry during the time period, at the time when heavy infantry proved to be the most important type of fighter on land. Then, in a generation or two, elite heavy infantry became a lot less important, and Sparta had demographic difficulties in replenishing its numbers, particularly of its core elite fighters. Light infantry with significantly less training became more important, as did light cavalry (no stirrups invented yet). Naval fighting became a lot more important also. So, what they were the best at became of decreasing relevance, and also their intensive training methods abetted by extreme social stratification didn't scale to the intensity of the conflict during the Peloponnesian War. To win, they had to make a bunch of massive adaptations and ally with the Persians.
In mid-fourth century BCE, was writing a book really sharing with the general public? They had no printing press. How many would read a book? Who was it really written for?
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They were certainly quite good at least at keeping numerically dominant helots down.
Plenty of places in ancient times used terror successfully to keep large slave populations in their place. But if you count up Sparta's win/loss record in known battles against other armies, they're almost exactly 50%. And they were 0-2 against the Macedonian phalanx.
i wonder how countries with mandatory military service deal with gun control for people after their mandatory military service is over.
Edit: Spelling
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It's hard for me to have tangible opinion on something as complicated as the Middle-east but surely part of the causes are exogenous, at what level and mechanism I can't tell. Surely another relevant part was and still is food: Swiss needs import, but for being well, in mere self-sufficiency they can survive, Lebanon can't, it import I think nearly all foods they needs and that's a big issue. Surely energy production…
Very interesting, thank you. I did not realize that Lebanon must import so much food. They have a very fertile country, possibly the most fertile percentagewise in the Middle East, I wonder why they must import so much food.
https://www.weeportal-lb.org/news/lebanon-imports-85-its-foo...
or
https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/lebanon/2022/03/11/leba...
https://asiatimes.com/2022/01/russia-ukraine-war-could-cause...
I suppose they have big water issues due to constant droughts and bad irrigation systems, perhaps hyper-dense population and constant war-alike status also impact much but...
And do not undervalue the energy part, pumps for instance can run on p.v. but most tractors, farm equipment run on diesel, witch is not produced locally and cost money. Food supply chain/transformation industry need energy, sometimes in important quantities to keep foods cold or to lyophilize them etc.
Energy does not make foods alone, but it's an important piece of the game.
The almost unreasonable effectiveness of citizen-soldier over the ages is often underappreciated. It takes life-long dedication and a whole martial culture for professionals to keep the upper hand (medieval Europe, Sparta)
Is it citizen-soldier vs professional, or is it a case of defense vs attack? Given an equivalent foe, how would they square up in defending their homelands?
The almost unreasonable effectiveness of citizen-soldier over the ages is often underappreciated. It takes life-long dedication and a whole martial culture for professionals to keep the upper hand (medieval Europe, Sparta)
Overall the Spartans weren't even much more effective. They took some losses battling other Greek city-states. Their martial prowess has been somewhat exaggerated. https://acoup.blog/2019/09/20/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
That straight wins/losses analysis leaves something wanting. Which were defensive battles and which were offensive ones? Could their reputation have prevented defensive battles which they would have otherwise subsequently won? And maybe more important, if it would have prevented battles they would have lost. The "If" reply being of course the famous example.