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World military forces

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(The following text is adapted from a handout given to students in my International Relations course at JMU.)

Whatever economic wealth or diplomatic resources a country may have at its disposal, when push comes to shove, it will be powerless to exert foreign influence or resist foreign pressure unless it possesses competent and effective armed forces. According to German military theorist Karl von Clauswitz (1780-1831), "War is nothing but the continuation of politics with the admixture of other means." This stark realist point of view has also been expressed by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who responded to Churchill's warning at the Potsdam Conference in 1945 that the Catholic Church would resist the imposition of a communist government in Poland by asking, "how many divisions does the Pope have?" Likewise, Chinese leader Mao Zedong declared, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." That being the case, it is essential for any leading contemplating the use of military force to think very clearly about what the political objectives are: to punish, to coerce, to intimidate, to deter, or to conquer territory.

It is important to note that the existence of nuclear weapons has not made war "obsolete" as many once thought; it simply constrains major powers from taking actions that might risk all-out retaliation from the other side. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union developed small "tactical" nuclear warheads that supposedly could be used on the battlefield. This remains a dubious proposition, however, and such weapons are being dismantled in the wake of the Cold War.

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Land forces

Land forces consist of combat units and support units. Ever since the Germans pioneered in the use of blitzkrieg (lightning war) tactics in 1939, properly-trained and equipped motorized armies have, under ideal conditions, been to advance very rapidly, up to 20 or 30 miles per day. With helicopter-borne airmobile units, even higher speeds can be achieved. The land forces of nearly all countries are organized in roughly the same hierarchical fashion. The basic unit is the division, with an average manpower of about 12,000; U.S. and NATO countries' divisions typically have more. The basic types of combat units are:

• Armored units -- based on tanks and other armored vehicles
• Mechanized infantry -- soldiers move via armored vehicles
• Light infantry -- soldiers move on foot, better suited for rough terrain
• Airborne -- soldiers parachute from aircraft or move via helicopters
• Marine -- soldiers specialized in landing on beaches and emergency deployment
• Commandos -- highly trained soldiers used for covert attacks
• Artillery -- large-caliber field guns ("cannons"), sometimes on armored vehicles
• Cavalry -- formerly used horses, now usually signifies highly mobile units

In addition to combat units, all major military formations have support personnel in such branches as logistics, medical, transportation, communication, etc. Without adequate, trained support it is impossible to sustain an offensive for any length of time because of the law of entropy: military units under fire tend to scatter and even fall apart unless they receive constant attention and replenishment. Most Third World military forces lack good support services, which detracts from the seemingly awesome force some of them (such as Iraq) possess. It requires at least a month for a country to mobilize its forces to prepare for war, and often several months to bring all of its reserve units up to combat readiness. Sustaining an offensive with modern high-technology equipment is prohibitively expensive for poor countries.

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Naval forces

Naval forces The primary mission of naval forces is to protect a country's maritime commerce. Landlocked countries such as Austria and Bolivia have only token Navies that patrol lakes and rivers. Modern navies consist of the following types of combat vessels:

• Aircraft carriers -- as 72 fixed wing aircraft plus 12 helicopters; key role in force projection.
• Cruisers -- medium-large vessels with a wide variety of weapons.
• Destroyers -- medium-small vessels, used mainly for escorting other naval and merchant ships.
• Frigates -- small ocean-going vessels that escort other ships, protecting against enemy submarines.
• Missile/patrol boats -- used to defend a country's coast from enemy attack.
• Submarines -- designed to sneak into enemy waters and either sink ships or launch nuclear missiles.

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Air forces

Air forces are essential for maintaining effective control of a country's territory in the modern world, since unopposed enemy aircraft could quickly wreck the essential infrastructure of modern life: electric power grids, petroleum refineries, and bridges. Air forces are also critical for supporting land offensives and for protecting naval forces against enemy attack. There are three main types of combat aircraft:

• Fighter planes -- small, high speed, designed for combat with enemy aircraft.
• Ground attack planes (fighter-bombers) -- support a country's land forces.
• Bombers -- larger, slower, longer-range; carry a heavy "payload" of bombs or missiles.

In addition, some countries possess ballistic missiles, some of which can be launched against targets as far as 7,000 miles away; these long-range strategic weapons are called intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). It takes only about 30 or 40 minutes for such a missile to reach its target, so there is virtually no warning, even with the best radar systems. Anti-ballistic missiles were developed by the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to defend against missile attacks, but they are severely constrained under the terms of the 1972 ABM treaty. Fear of proliferation of missiles to "rogue" states such as Iraq and North Korea has led to new calls for the United States to build an limited-scale ABM system.

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World military forces, 1995

* After rapid mobilization of citizen reserves, Israel has 602,000 armed forces personnel; Sweden has 793,000 and Switzerland has 400,000.
** Country involved in civil war; no meaningful figures.
@Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan disposed of the nuclear weapons they had "inherited" from from the former Soviet Union.
NOTE: Many of the above figures are estimates, and the reliability varies from country to country; "Military spending" comparisons are very difficult.
"Armed forces" include only active duty personnel; "Divisions" are the equivalent number of standard-size units, about 12,000 personnel each.
"Ships" include submarines, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and frigates; "Aircraft" include combat aircraft only.
SOURCES: International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 1995-1996; James F. Dunnigan, How to Make War; Washington Post.
COMPILED BY: Andrew G. Clem, originally for POLI / INTL 105, International Relations, Virginia Commonwealth University, Fall 1999. Subsequently updated for courses at other universities.

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