Maybe it has nothing to do with it, maybe it does, but an oldsaying goes like this

"No inspection ready unit is ready for war, no war ready unit is ready for inspection."

Perhaps if the forces you'd mentioned had worried less about looking good, and more about fighting the enemy, then they would have fared better on the battlefield.

Now the Nazi military was pretty good at war, until they invaded Russia, and suddenly discovered who this "General Winter" guy really was. as paraquoted by an old russian vet on a TV documentary I saw a few years ago.

 

"Now the Germans had really pretty uniforms. Our uniforms were ugly. But our uniforms were also warm. The German uniforms were not so warm. So at night they froze to death."

What exactly have North Korea and Cuba lost?

But Herald, they are free from the West.

 

For better or worse.