hm... no, not really. Global Firepower ranks them 48th, even with the boost they get for being landlocked (landlocked countries are not penalized for having no navy), they still end up pretty low.
If it took the U.S. about two decades for the U.S. to win a war (e.g.- Afghanistan), or pull out of a war(e.g.-Vietnam), you can't just say the other country's military was weak and give an excuse saying the U.S. only had issues because of the other country's topography or vegetation--the U.S. also has a great variation in topography and vegetation
I looked more into the algorithm used by TotalFirepower. As it turns out, they actually do *not* count nuclear weapons when considering the algorithm. So there are other reasons for the closeness in scores between the US and Russia. It's a complicated formula using 40 different data points. Of those, Russia has an edge on the United States in artillery strength (a variety of different kinds) and certain types of naval vessels. Russia's external debt is 1/28 that of the US. It produces more oil than the US but consumes far less than it produces (unlike the US which consumes almost twice what it produces). Russia also has 3x more proven oil reserves. And its a bigger country, though I'm not sure if that's a plus or minus... harder to conquer, but also more difficult to defend.
I gave up when I answered Sweden as a joke and it was there! Country that hasn't been in war since 19th century. Country that has made political decision that they don't even try to keep army that can defense their own country. Nothing against swedish but give me a break.
You realize that this is a top 30 list, right? Not top 5 or top 10. Which country do you believe should take Sweden's place? The Philippines? They're currently ranked 31st. Switzerland? Malaysia? South Africa?
Sweden still has among the finest air forces in the world. I think that alone probably places them in the top 30. Though they have downgraded the size of their airforce in recent years and are near the bottom of this list. Perhaps in a few more years as we see the rising power of Asian countries and a few in Africa, Sweden will be knocked off the list entirely. But for now, honestly, who would you replace them with?
surprises me Vatican is not on here. I mean the pope with his cardinals and highly faithfuls would get gods full support and win everything and they have their own guards hopping around in their fancy suits.
I don't think that god's favor is part of the algorithm used. And while in the past, for sure, the Vatican could field a pretty formidable armed force, these days I don't think they have much in the way of conventional weaponry.
Stalin once supposedly said, when told that Pope Pius XII disapproved of his policies, "How many divisions does the Pope have?" 600 years earlier that would have been a legitimate question. The Papal Army was disbanded in 1870 according to Wikipedia.
This is my theory: GFP doesn't publish their algorithm. But they do say a couple things about it. One thing is that landlocked countries are not "penalized" for not having a navy. It's my opinion that for most countries which are not landlocked this probably means that they are, in effect, heavily penalized for having a coastline. If they are comparing naval strength against some sort of mean, then the fact that America's naval power so *completely* outclasses everyone else, it's just totally embarrassing how weak every other navy in the world is compared to America's (even including countries like Russia and the UK), then I think what happens is that countries that are landlocked in effect get a pretty substantial boost to their ranking. By far the oddest countries to ever show up in the top 30 are Ethiopia, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic. All land-locked countries.
:) ha. but... see... the US Navy is so overpowered they wouldn't even have to. They could park a fleet of aircraft carriers, missile cruisers and nuclear submarines somewhere in the Mediterranean and launch enough tomahawk missiles, tactical nukes, and B2 bomber-delivered bunker busters to turn the Swiss Alps into a valley. And that's true for any land-locked country on Earth. It's not as if navies are only used in amphibious assaults these days.
I completely agree with you here. It seems silly to almost penalise a country for having a coastline. America, with the most powerful navy ever can project its force all over the world. I don't think any other country on its own has that capability.
I don't know. For whatever reason, the website GlobalFirepower chose not to rank them. I'm guessing that if they were ranked they would be about on par with Australia.
update: The Netherlands was recently added to the GFP list of ranked countries and I have removed the caveat. They're currently ranked 32nd in the world.
Why would they be here? Our military is a joke. Ofcourse, we do have some ships and we do have patriotmissiles but that's about it. Gouvernements budget cuts made us lose almost all of our tanks and there's close to none ammunition in stock for let's say training. On paper we have 13 Chinook helicopters but only a few of them actually fly, the others are in parts or maintainance without parts.
A lot of people don't think of Saudi, though as a % of GDP they are the 3rd biggest military spenders in the world, after North Korea and Eritrea. Having lived and worked here for 5 years, though, I'm not sure if that would translate into actual war-making capability if it ever came to it. I wouldn't have much confidence in the people here. I know they conquered one of the largest land empires in history in a very short span of time once upon a time but that was a long time ago.
o.O So surprised about Sweden. People keep saying things like "if we were invaded, we could only hold out for one week". I'm also surprised about Japan; aren't they supposed to not even have a military?
Probably depends on who invades you. If it was the USA, a week might be optimistic. If it was Finland, though, you'd probably be fine.
Regarding Japan, it's actually true that the Japanese constitution prohibits the development of "war potential" and specifically renounces war as a means of settling disputes. The constitution was written by the USA after World War 2. However, starting in 1950 largely in response to developments in Korea, Japan began building up something like a national guard. That has evolved into the Japan Self Defense Force, one of the finest national guard forces in the world. And more recently (last year, in fact), the Japanese government has approved a full-scale rearmament of the country as a way of countering the increased military spending and posturing of China and the continued craziness emanating from North Korea. Not that that decision had any effect on these rankings, but it shows attitudes have slowly been changing since 1945.
I wouldn't underestimate Finland as an opponent, after all Finland was the only country to ward off the attack of the mighty Soviet army. There's also 350 000 reserve soliders in Finland to Sweden's measly 200 000.
I get your point, but if you wanted to pick a weak country easily won, I don't think Finland was the best choice of all Sweden's neighbours. Just saying...
Defending your own territory is a lot different from invading someone else's. I'm sure the Finns are brave enough but if they wanted to invade Sweden, really, the Swedes have nothing to worry about.
It's probably worth noting that of all of these countries, only the United States and Russia really have the capability of projecting significant power all over the world. China and India have significant weight to swing around in their own regions, but are still not significant global powers militarily. The UK and the rest of the top 10 are capable of projecting some more across the world and in their own regions, but not enough at this point to conquer a decent-sized country more than 1,000 miles away or so. The bottom 20 countries on the list are all quite capable of defending themselves against their neighbors- but none of them really have the power necessary to attack any other country that they are not adjacent to. Not in any meaningful way, anyway. With a few odd exceptions most of these countries are only interested in self-defense or at most settling border and trade disputes in their local area.
I just updated it a month ago. But I can do so again when I have time. They made a lot of changes in the last month, much more than in the entire past 18 months combined... maybe they adjusted the algorithm or something. Syria, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic are now in the top 30.. The Netherlands has been ranked finally (#32), and Mexico, North Korea, and Ethiopia have all dropped out of the top 30.
In addition to the precipitous drops of those three countries which fell off the top 30 entirely, there were big declines in the numbers posted by Iran, Sweden, and a few other countries; as well as big gains for the three newcomers to the top 30 already mentioned, and also Turkey, Japan, Canada, Poland, and Australia. China continues to close the gap between itself and Russia, but has not yet surpassed it's comrade to the North. The USA, of course, retains its commanding lead.
Why do Russia and China have a higher power index, but lower ranking than America? The UK has a higher power index than France and India too, but is ranked lower. In fact, the ranking seems to jump around all over the place. How are the rankings calculated?
I don't think that's how it works. I'm guessing that the aim is to make 1.00 the median score, as there are 126 countries on the list, and #62 (Hungary) has a score of 1.0007.
Who is in last place now? Any country come after Vatican City (do Popes get elected on their "commander-in-chief qualifications", I wonder)? They DO have Swiss Guard army (with no nukes, I assume) and are landlocked, though Navy could presumably sail the Tiber.
Of the 126 countries ranked by GFP, the Central African Republic comes in last place. But there are many countries not ranked that don't even have a military.
This really rewards faster typers, because even when I know the answers, it's hard to think and type 10 answers per minute consistently. This is my third try and I keep missing a few. I don't know why the default time of 4 minutes was considered to be too much for 30 answers.
Well... there are 196 answers on the Countries of the World Quiz with a time limit of 12 minutes. That's over 16 answers per minute. This is 30 answers, so if the time limit were 4 minutes that would be 7.5 answers per minute. Most of these answers have one word in them. I think only people who have never seen a keyboard before in their lives type fewer than 10 words per minute.
Forget Indonesia, Vietnam and Taiwan (really??). Surprising, Spain and Ukraine are still here despite crisis and corruption. Also Egypt is shockingly high, since it cannot control own territory.
I understand, military actually leads the state, but i meant their unsuccessful war against IS and other terrorist groups at Sinai Peninsula and around.
fighting a homegrown ideologically-motivated guerilla/terrorist insurgency is next to impossible. Even the United States, by far the most powerful and sophisticated military power in the history of the world, has had only middling success at such endeavors.
I think the lesson of history is that the solutions to such insurgencies are political rather than military. The military can only cut heads off the hydra.
It depends on the resolve of both the insurgents and the established power, how much legitimacy/popularity each have with the populace at large, and also how much brutality the stronger power is willing to or able to exert on the weaker one. Before the contemporary age of democracy and television news media, if an indigenous population was causing you trouble you could just commit wholesale genocide against them and that actually tended to work pretty well.
Well....I guessed everything. Algeria, Taiwan, Thailand,Sweden,Greece,Ukraine... All of these countries that many People would not think of. And then... My only miss was Israel. That's frustrating :D. 29/30
The Israeli military is far more sophisticated but the Egyptian military is larger and the equation also factors in demographic information. In addition, Egypt and Israel have had a peace treaty in effect since 1979. If Israel had to fight off the same coalition of countries today as they were able to defeat in 1948, it's very likely that things would go a different way.
I've worked full-time in Virginia, California, Seoul, Riyadh, and Dammam. I had a residence in Bahrain when I was working in Dammam. I went to South Korea and Saudi Arabia specifically for jobs I had accepted. I've lived and visited many other places but the rest of those places I was there just because I wanted to be, though sometimes I would do a bit of work here and there.
As far as I'm aware, there's been an update in the GlobalFirepower index. I don't like it, because the UK has slipped down the rankings, but it's happened...
Looks like there hasn't been any changes to the countries included in the top 30, just a bit of shuffling up and down within their ranks. I'll probably hold off updating until next year. They still haven't fixed the stupidity of the algorithm that boosts the Czech Republic so high.
There has been a lot of investment in capability by the Czech government in recent years. They’ve dropped down to 41 now, I believe this is because they’re in a transitional phase of modernisation. They remain a relatively big producer of armaments, and have been historically. Up until 2004, they had cumpulsory military service, so would have ranked even higher then. I wouldn’t be too inclined to underestimate the Czechs, I think that they’d punch well above their weight, if push came to shove.
I forgot Germany??? Hahahaha! I'm honestly surprised that some of the biggest drug-running countries such as Colombia from South America didn't make the list... surely they have the armaments?
As I said back in the day, I still have my serious doubts about the algorithm. I don't believe the USA, Russia and China are anywhere near that close. Russia and China to each other, sure, but neither or them are even close to the US. Take aircraft carriers and force projection more generally, for example - the US has a clear advantage over both combined. Indeed I have little doubt that, though it wouldn't be easy, quick or bloodless, the USA could take both the Russian Federation and the PRC together. On the other hand, it seems about right that there's such a big jump from the top three to fourth. I doubt India could at present pose much of a threat to China, though they do have a quality navy.
The algorithm only factors conventional weaponry, so nukes are not included. It also takes into consideration things like economic power, natural resources, geography, etc. North Korea has an anemic economy, it can't feed its own people day to day, it has no oil or anything like that. It's a house of cards that would collapse without outside support. Most of their military technology is obsolete, too. But they do have a lot of jets, a lot of submarines, a lot of artillery, and a very large army... so they make the list.
Not to mention the fact that, what nukes they may possess have probably been cobbled together with bits of old milk cartons, empty aluminium cans and some sticky tape. They’d probably go off in one of their faces, like your drunk uncle messing about at a home firework display.
Hey @Kal, do you know why the source info chooses to exclude nukes etc.? If I was a megalomaniac dictator thinking of invading someone else, that’s probably one of the most important factors affecting my decision.
I don't know but I assume it's because the widespread use of nukes would render conventional weaponry pointless and would be a civilization-ended event where nobody won. And, knowing this, most governments and world leaders with an IQ in triple digits are extremely reluctant to use nuclear weapons for any reason, making them basically very expensive very dangerous paperweights in the majority of scenarios.
Interesting. I would still assume they would have a huge deterrent effect if nothing else. To me that would be worth more than a couple of hundred tanks, for example, but I guess it’s tricky to decide exactly what weight to give to nukes. Still seems a slightly strange omission to me, but sure. An interesting quiz regardless.
I didn't do the update but looks like South Africa and Switzerland are new. Don't remember who was at the bottom before. I think Sweden, the Czech Republic, Ethiopia, Singapore, and the UAE were on some previous iterations.
I would love to see a quiz that divides these power numbers by the area or population of the countries... small countries with strong militaries. I'd imagine Israel would be very high up there.
I haven't looked at the page's methodology in a while, but I'm guessing that this is another quirk of the algorithm they use which grants an absurd boost to landlocked countries, since they are not penalized for having no navy. Theoretically this should be neutral, giving them neither an advantage nor disadvantage over other countries with a coastline that do have navies; but I think that in practice the fact that the USA's navy so completely dwarfs every other country in the world's makes things a bit janky, and so any country with access to a sea, even if they have the *2nd* largest navy in the world, is automatically at a disadvantage (in terms of the algorithm) versus any country that does not. That's my best guess. ::shrug::
Fortunately, for whatever reason, landlocked countries tend to have very poor militaries, and so this weakness in the algorithm doesn't affect this quiz very much. Only one landlocked country cracks the top 20 this year. But in the past, the other strangest members of the top 20 (Ethiopia and the Czech Republic) were also landlocked. So I'm pretty sure it's the same thing happening in each case.
Egypt is a bit weird. Not a huge surprise and I totally expected it to be on here, but it's kinda an outlier in the top 10 among other countries that are mostly either very developed, very populous, or both.
I don't see it that way. Apart from North Korea, pretty much every country in the world that spends an exorbitant amount of money, as a percentage of GDP, on their military is in or around the Middle East. And this goes back decades. Egypt, being at the heart of many of those historical Middles Eastern conflicts going back to the dawn of civilization, being in the recent past by far the most advanced, most prosperous, most culturally significant Arab Muslim nation in the world (before the big Arabian oil boom), and presently still the most populous Arab country in the world and one that is heavily militarized and essentially controlled by a military dictatorship... seems to belong in my eyes.
Suppose that makes sense. I don't know much about modern Egyptian history, but based on what I do know, the military has always played a pretty important and powerful role. Plus, France and the UK have significantly smaller populations and arguably less of a need for a strong military than Egypt.
Yet another quiz in which knowing the most populous and economically prosperous countries serves as a quasi-proxy for knowing what the quiz is actually about.
I may look into it. I think QM started updating this one automatically. But it might be on a 1 or 2 year timer I don't know how it works when he does that.
Canadry recently became the 4th person on my block list, because he's a troll and QM won't allow me to respond to him accordingly. I would summarize what he had contributed to the conversation, but, he has contributed nothing.
One of the biggest upsets in military history. A lot of contributing factors, including many things that don't factor in to the Global Firepower algorithm.
This rather backs up what you previously said about nukes being little more than expensive paperweights, since Russia could obviously ‘win’ by firing them at major cities and forcing submission, but even Tsar Vladimir knows that he just can’t do that.
I suspect that this measure is rated as a better one than most because of the of the sheer number of variables it accounts for, from an impressive set of data. It’s clearly one of the best as a quantitative analysis, but therein lies its inherent and unavoidable flaw: in the real world, there are far too many variables which can’t be quantified and fed into algorithms. For example, how could they quantify the UK’s relative advantage over France as an island; or, how much advantage does Switzerland gain by being surrounded by Alps? What role does morale play in conflict, or home advantage? Relative competence/experience amongst the general staff? Some things, you just can’t assign a number to.
Learned something. Never knew that Switzerland was even close enough to the top to have ever been considered in this list, regardless of their current status. Dang! Don't mess with those mountaineering financiers!
They get an unrealistic boost for being landlocked due to the algorithm. But... even if they didn't... there's a fairly steep drop off in the latter half of the list.
Doubtful. As embarrassing as their disastrous and criminal escapades in Ukraine have been for them lately, they're still ultimately stronger than the countries near the bottom of the list. But... I wouldn't be surprised at all to see their position revised down.
Rule them out of what? "Winning" the disastrous war that they started in Ukraine? Or being on this list?
I already said that they would not be kicked off the list. Even if their position may, and probably should, be revised downward... which... maybe wouldn't even require any special exceptions or adjustments to the algorithm that GFP uses to generate the list if you consider the staggering number of losses Russia has suffered in terms of equipment and personnel... simply adjusting the stats and reapplying the algorithm would do that.
As for their campaign of war crimes in Ukraine... I don't know what you count as a "win" for them, especially given that their starting objective was to take over Kyiv within a couple of weeks and dominate the entire country probably within a month, installing some kind of obedient Russian puppet government there that would agree to recognize Russian annexation of Crimea and "independence" of Russian puppet states in the Donbass...
... and that obviously is not going to happen and even Russia apparently has totally given up on those objectives. At this point... if they even manage to hold Crimea in the long run I think a lot of people would call that a "win," but they could have potentially done that even before invading and were arguably in a stronger position to do so back then. (some speculate that their hold on Crimea was slipping and untenable long-term and that this was the entire reason they invaded in the first place, to try and make a "land bridge" across the Donbass to better supply and fortify Crimea)
No idea where you're getting your information about stagnant territory movements (with Russians retreating all over the place lately, even from territory Moscow claims to have annexed), or the casualties being "generally even" (with Russian losses recently eclipsing 90,000, according to non-Russian media). Ukraine obviously has the momentum currently and Russia has been thoroughly humiliated.
As to whether or not Putin's hundred of thousands of conscripted elders with rheumatism, prisoners, and various ethnic minorities that hate him are enough to turn the tide and maybe allow Russia to hold on to *some* territory or even negotiate a peaceful settlement that allows them to gain something, save face, and call it a "win"... remains to be seen.
But there's no way anyone being serious could call this anything other than a complete and total disaster for Russia the likes of which the world has rarely even seen before. Hard to think of anything at all recent that was even comparable. Going back into history there are more examples... Agincourt... Thermopylae... The Battle of Britain... the Russo-Japanese War, or perhaps the American Revolution. But even if Russia carves out some kind of victory after everything else that has happened, this will still go down as one of biggest muck-ups in military history, with one side getting absolutely spanked by an inferior enemy.
Further... it's quite possible... and personally I hope that we'll come to see this happen... that Putin's totally wrong-headed attack on Ukraine and the global response to it will ultimately usher in the collapse of the Russian state. Let alone a mere loss in the "special military operation" in Ukraine. I'm not saying that this is definitely going to happen... but... with Russian men fleeing and dying in record numbers, at least 100k will die in Ukraine before the war is over, nearly a million have fled the country to avoid conscription or just to get off what they see as a sinking ship, the brain drain, the global sanctions, and the damage Putin has done to the stability of the ruling political order will all combine to, perhaps, lead to the failure of the Russian Federation. Which would be awful for Russia, obviously, but I think it would be a net positive if the country was broken up into many smaller countries and not allowed to continue threatening world peace and stability.
I honestly think that this quiz should be abolished, and other military rankings based on power. Most people usually base these rankings on how strong they are, meaning equipment, aircraft, artillery, nukes, destroyers, carriers, and more. Although, what most people do not realize on that there is no proof to show that one country is stronger than another or not, because this is all just bias, for example right now russia is getting their butts kicked in ukraine even though they are like ten times stronger or whatever, anything can happen and ukraine can beat them and we’ll never know, so does that mean russias power index go up or down? If not, then prove to me these rankings are not bias, and tell me with actual evidence to change my mind. All this is just telling your country that it is better than another to help think that we are going to win many conflicts. No rankings should ever include these because these are bias and there is no evidence to confirm one country is better.
Afghanistan, isnt it a very powerful military force
Sweden still has among the finest air forces in the world. I think that alone probably places them in the top 30. Though they have downgraded the size of their airforce in recent years and are near the bottom of this list. Perhaps in a few more years as we see the rising power of Asian countries and a few in Africa, Sweden will be knocked off the list entirely. But for now, honestly, who would you replace them with?
This is my theory: GFP doesn't publish their algorithm. But they do say a couple things about it. One thing is that landlocked countries are not "penalized" for not having a navy. It's my opinion that for most countries which are not landlocked this probably means that they are, in effect, heavily penalized for having a coastline. If they are comparing naval strength against some sort of mean, then the fact that America's naval power so *completely* outclasses everyone else, it's just totally embarrassing how weak every other navy in the world is compared to America's (even including countries like Russia and the UK), then I think what happens is that countries that are landlocked in effect get a pretty substantial boost to their ranking. By far the oddest countries to ever show up in the top 30 are Ethiopia, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic. All land-locked countries.
It sucks to be a North Korean
Regarding Japan, it's actually true that the Japanese constitution prohibits the development of "war potential" and specifically renounces war as a means of settling disputes. The constitution was written by the USA after World War 2. However, starting in 1950 largely in response to developments in Korea, Japan began building up something like a national guard. That has evolved into the Japan Self Defense Force, one of the finest national guard forces in the world. And more recently (last year, in fact), the Japanese government has approved a full-scale rearmament of the country as a way of countering the increased military spending and posturing of China and the continued craziness emanating from North Korea. Not that that decision had any effect on these rankings, but it shows attitudes have slowly been changing since 1945.
I get your point, but if you wanted to pick a weak country easily won, I don't think Finland was the best choice of all Sweden's neighbours. Just saying...
http://globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp
In addition to the precipitous drops of those three countries which fell off the top 30 entirely, there were big declines in the numbers posted by Iran, Sweden, and a few other countries; as well as big gains for the three newcomers to the top 30 already mentioned, and also Turkey, Japan, Canada, Poland, and Australia. China continues to close the gap between itself and Russia, but has not yet surpassed it's comrade to the North. The USA, of course, retains its commanding lead.
try my Andorra quiz here.
http://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/178909/andorra-a-z
Drop that hundo!!!
I even guessed Taiwan, ahah!
*sad British noises*
I suspect that this measure is rated as a better one than most because of the of the sheer number of variables it accounts for, from an impressive set of data. It’s clearly one of the best as a quantitative analysis, but therein lies its inherent and unavoidable flaw: in the real world, there are far too many variables which can’t be quantified and fed into algorithms. For example, how could they quantify the UK’s relative advantage over France as an island; or, how much advantage does Switzerland gain by being surrounded by Alps? What role does morale play in conflict, or home advantage? Relative competence/experience amongst the general staff? Some things, you just can’t assign a number to.
I already said that they would not be kicked off the list. Even if their position may, and probably should, be revised downward... which... maybe wouldn't even require any special exceptions or adjustments to the algorithm that GFP uses to generate the list if you consider the staggering number of losses Russia has suffered in terms of equipment and personnel... simply adjusting the stats and reapplying the algorithm would do that.
As for their campaign of war crimes in Ukraine... I don't know what you count as a "win" for them, especially given that their starting objective was to take over Kyiv within a couple of weeks and dominate the entire country probably within a month, installing some kind of obedient Russian puppet government there that would agree to recognize Russian annexation of Crimea and "independence" of Russian puppet states in the Donbass...
No idea where you're getting your information about stagnant territory movements (with Russians retreating all over the place lately, even from territory Moscow claims to have annexed), or the casualties being "generally even" (with Russian losses recently eclipsing 90,000, according to non-Russian media). Ukraine obviously has the momentum currently and Russia has been thoroughly humiliated.
But there's no way anyone being serious could call this anything other than a complete and total disaster for Russia the likes of which the world has rarely even seen before. Hard to think of anything at all recent that was even comparable. Going back into history there are more examples... Agincourt... Thermopylae... The Battle of Britain... the Russo-Japanese War, or perhaps the American Revolution. But even if Russia carves out some kind of victory after everything else that has happened, this will still go down as one of biggest muck-ups in military history, with one side getting absolutely spanked by an inferior enemy.
Amazing quiz!