Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014)

[AmericanPride]

I'm currently working on a quantitative assessment of national power (political, economic, and military) with an optional extended scale of science and social (soft power) dimensions. The intent is to capture the full breadth of a state's power. I've only included United Nations members. The methodology enables me to see what percentage of the global power pie that each state owns. These are the top five:

National Power
1. United States (16.23%)
2. China (7.47%)
3. Russian Federation (6.20%)
4. Japan (4.23%)
5. France (2.98%)
...
41. Ukraine (0.44%)

However, when looking at economics, the USA drops to #2 while Russia drops to #10. And when looking at military power, the USA and Russia occupy #1 and #2 respectively. Whereas the United States has 34.14% of the 'military pie', Russia has 15.27%. NATO military strength is 46.17% while CIS/CSTO is 15.75%.

So, a couple of insights bearing on this situation:

1) Russia is a 'great power' in the traditional realist sense. It is capable of exercising hard power on its neighbors. I suspect when I complete the extended scale, it's rank will decline on account of its underdeveloped 'soft power'.

2) Ukraine has no hope of defending itself alone against Russia.

3) NATO deterrence is only effective when the alliance operates in unison - the split positions diminishes NATO power. The combined military strength of NATO countries bordering Russia or Ukraine (Norway, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia) amount to 0.706%. That's hardly a credible threat to Russia. France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, and the UK have 10.02% military strength compared to Russia's 15.27%. In other words, an effective military option is dependent on the United States, but as we know, the importance of Crimea and Ukraine varies between Washington, Berlin, and Warsaw.

[OUTLAW 09]

For a country that claims it can resist the sanctions being levied against it this came up today on CNBC. Looks like the US understands the Russian economy (who has influence as an oligarch) better than Putin does. Maybe the NSA was right after all in pursuing their surveillance concepts overseas.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is calling on billionaires to pay taxes amid fears that a new wave of Western sanctions against the country over the annexation of Crimea may hit businessmen.

At a meeting Thursday with Russia's richest men in Moscow, Putin said businesses "ought to register on Russian territory and pay taxes in our motherland."

[carl]

American Pride:

That is an interesting concept. I think it is useful only in a like vs like sense. What I mean is if you compared Pakistan to the US the US beats Pakistan on every measure, yet the Pak Army/ISI beat us in Afghanistan (or will have barring a miracle). If Ivan went into the rest of Ukraine and the US and frontline NATO states embarked upon an Unconventional Warfare campaign I don't think the Russian economy could handle that, especially combined with economic sanctions over a period of years.

[AmericanPride]

American Pride:

That is an interesting concept. I think it is useful only in a like vs like sense. What I mean is if you compared Pakistan to the US the US beats Pakistan on every measure, yet the Pak Army/ISI beat us in Afghanistan (or will have barring a miracle). If Ivan went into the rest of Ukraine and the US and frontline NATO states embarked upon an Unconventional Warfare campaign I don't think the Russian economy could handle that, especially combined with economic sanctions over a period of years.

Carl,

You bring up a good point. My intention is to measure capability for the purpose of providing an analytical context for understanding state actions and outcomes. Context, execution, the availability of information, position and posture, etc all influence outcomes. So of course while Iran, for example, may rank higher than Bulgaria, I don't realistically expect Iran to ever succesfully attack (or attack at all) Bulgaria.

I'd be interested to see what you use for assessing power and how you integrate the various elements to get an overall ranking.

The first version uses these factors:
Political - EIU's Stability Ratings, KOF Globalization Index
Economic - GDP, FOREX, Government Revenue
Military - Manpower, Budget, Aircraft Carriers, Nuclear Weapons
Scientific - Global Innovation Index, # of Patents, (# of Degree Holders and/or Universities)
Social - Social Progress Index, Human Development Index, Population

These are not the final factors I will be using in the model, since there are others I am considering adding and some of these listed may be subject to removal also. I'm also debating about how complex to make the model - the issue will be how much information is actually available.

The reason why I chose not to use the DIME factors is because I want a quantitative rather than qualitiative measurement in order to measure each state in the same way.

EDIT: As to the methodology, each category has several factors (listed above). The score for each state is given as a percentage of the category that state owns; i.e. Russia owns 48.81% of the world's nuclear weapons. These factors are then averaged for the index of that category; and then those categories are all averaged together for the overall rating of the state.

Initially, I was going to rank each state in each category and then average all the rankings, but I think that approach was to disconnected from the quantitative factors I was using.

[wm]

The first version uses these factors:
Political - EIU's Stability Ratings, KOF Globalization Index
Economic - GDP, FOREX, Government Revenue
Military - Manpower, Budget, Aircraft Carriers, Nuclear Weapons
Scientific - Global Innovation Index, # of Patents, (# of Degree Holders and/or Universities)
Social - Social Progress Index, Human Development Index, Population

These are not the final factors I will be using in the model, since there are others I am considering adding and some of these listed may be subject to removal also. I'm also debating about how complex to make the model - the issue will be how much information is actually available.

The reason why I chose not to use the DIME factors is because I want a quantitative rather than qualitiative measurement in order to measure each state in the same way.

EDIT: As to the methodology, each category has several factors (listed above). The score for each state is given as a percentage of the category that state owns; i.e. Russia owns 48.81% of the world's nuclear weapons. These factors are then averaged for the index of that category; and then those categories are all averaged together for the overall rating of the state.

Initially, I was going to rank each state in each category and then average all the rankings, but I think that approach was to disconnected from the quantitative factors I was using.

A couple of thoughts on a few of your factors:

Nuclear weapons have value only insofar as the will exists to use them and a delivery platform exists to get them where one wants/needs.

Why aircraft carriers; why not boomers and attack subs instead? Is this meant to be a measure of force projection capability?
In a previous century, battleships proved to be a rather useless measure of power as neither side (in WWI at least) seemed willing to risk them very much. And , as the War of 1812 showed, size isn't all that matters--the frigate based US Navy was qualitatively superior although numerically inferior--better seamanship was only one of the reasons for the disparity. The sheer number of British ships and American risk aversion were significant factors in the turn around of the naval campaign in the latter part of the War of 1812, probably more so than the number of 1st rate ships of the line that Britain had.

Another thing for your consideration. Intangible and immeasurable things play a part in determining power. As the short little Corsican allegedly said, "In battle, the moral is to the physical as three to one." Things like "home field advantage" count.

[jmm99]

The original on Youtube (60 sec. video).



This week's Russian version, from Reuters, Russia can turn US to radioactive ash - Kremlin-backed journalist (by Lydia Kelly, Mar 16, 2014):

[Video here]

MOSCOW, March 16 (Reuters) - A Kremlin-backed journalist issued a stark warning to the United States about Moscow's nuclear capabilities on Sunday as the White House threatened sanctions over Crimea's referendum on union with Russia.

"Russia is the only country in the world that is realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash," television presenter Dmitry Kiselyov said on his weekly current affairs show.

Behind him was a backdrop of a mushroom cloud following a nuclear blast.

Kiselyov was named by President Vladimir Putin in December as the head of a new state news agency whose task will be to portray Russia in the best possible light.

Yup, Mr Kiselyov certainly has a way with words and images - especially with Americans - to show Russia in its best possible light - how many lumens are there in a 50 megaton air burst ?

As Wm correctly points out:

Nuclear weapons have value only insofar as the will exists to use them and a delivery platform exists to get them where one wants/needs.

and that the sawed-off Corsican also had it right:

In battle, the moral is to the physical as three to one.

Mr Kiselyov and the two Chinese colonels have reminded us all that the future is as likely to be about unrestricted warfare as about anything else - which renders Article 2 of the UN Charter humorous at best and dangerous to non-aggressors at worst.

So, reaching back into history, a decade before 1964, we find the 1954 Jimmy Doolittle Report (bio, Wiki, report):

pp.16-17
The second consideration is less tangible but equally important. It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever coat.

There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of "fair play" must be reconsidered.

1. What do you think the EU-NATO community would say about Doolittle's statement ?

2. What do you think the USG would say about Doolittle's statement ?

3. What do you say about Doolittle's statement ?

Next, another (more recent) historical piece for your consideration, The Security and Defense Agenda (Future of NATO) (as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Brussels, Belgium, Friday, June 10, 2011); the whole speech is worth the short read, but here is the key point:

With respect to Europe, for the better part of six decades there has been relatively little doubt or debate in the United States about the value and necessity of the transatlantic alliance. The benefits of a Europe whole, prosperous and free after being twice devastated by wars requiring American intervention was self evident.

Thus, for most of the Cold War U.S. governments could justify defense investments and costly forward bases that made up roughly 50 percent of all NATO military spending. But some two decades after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. share of NATO defense spending has now risen to more than 75 percent – at a time when politically painful budget and benefit cuts are being considered at home.

The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress – and in the American body politic writ large – to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense. Nations apparently willing and eager for American taxpayers to assume the growing security burden left by reductions in European defense budgets.

Indeed, if current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, future U.S. political leaders– those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me – may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.

What I’ve sketched out is the real possibility for a dim, if not dismal future for the transatlantic alliance.

1. Did this speech (and similar speeches by Bob Gates' successors, cited in the article linked by Mark Adams on Rasmussen) give the EU-NATO community fair warning of a drastic shift in US involvement ?

2. What has the EU-NATO community done in response to those US warnings ?

Finally, a read for this situation is John LeCarre's The Looking Glass War, a very sad book because it shows that agencies cannot live in the past and expect to survive - snip from a review of the book:

A profound anatomy of moral deterioration, March 23, 2007

... For my part, it is the one book of Le Carre's that remained with me and troubled me the longest ...
...
The plot itself is simple: a small, practically defunct British spy agency with a mandate for military targets that has been lagging on aimlessly since WWII, gets one more shot at mounting an intelligence operation. WWII was their best of times, the source of their pride and nostalgia: since then, stripped from financing, backwards on technology, they are no more than a bureaucratic specter.

But the gods of warfare reward their zealots, and out of the blue, the agency is offered to retrieve some crucial information about military installations beyond the iron wall (I'll be stingy with details so as not to spoil too much). Everybody wakes up. As they do not have even a single operational agent (nor a radio, weapons, vehicles etc.), they must recruit one, hastily train and employ him; but they need to constantly lie to him, else he might realize how reduced they have become.
...
So much is Leiser involved in his new life, that his common sense does not reveal to him the amateur nature of the preparations. The radio technology he is expected to use is outdated, cumbersome and easy to intercept; there is no clear plan of action, really, except for getting him in; certainly no one gives serious thought how to get him out. The readers suspect this since a totally mundane assignment that Avery embarked on earlier, which was botched for lack of preparation and professionalism, is praised by his superiors as a success; so utterly afraid of facing their own incompetence they have lost that all-important ability of learning from mistakes.

The Circus, their rival agency where Smiley works, of course realizes this. Firmly in the grasp of Control, with Smiley as his lieutenant and sometimes conscience, the Circus observes and keeps its distance .... However, neither Control nor Smiley will deny the specter team the rope that they require to hang their own agent when everything, of course -- goes wrong.

In the present context, the US is still the Circus; without the US, EU-NATO is something of a "specter team" - although it doesn't have to be that way.

Thinking stuff.

Regards

Mike

[OUTLAW 09]

JMM---reference the Gates comments---when a superpower uses the economic card as an argument in order to withdraw fully overlooks the concept of power projection that has been say for the last 500 years the corner stone of what countries perceive power projection to be.

We pulled out of Europe and it is in fact hidden between the lines in his comments---"since the fall of the wall there has been peace"--when one argues this way it does not sound so brutal to one's allies that 1) we do not have any more money ourselves and 2) we are now going to soft power ie diplomacy.

What this WH and for that matter the previous WH did not fully understand is that when one rejects the military power projection ability then one must be prepared to use the economic power card to it's fullest---why---with military projection you get the opposition's attention in a hurry as he then has to factor in the use of violence and how will it affect him.

With the economic card---it is much much slower and the opposition has to think hey I can hold out in this game and that is where Putin/Russia is at the moment.

Unless one is fully prepared to truly inflect pain via bank collapses and entire industrial stoppages which will as the world is totally netted via globalization --- the hurt will to a degree come back against you---but if the goal is not to use violence in order to achieve a political goal then the returning pain can be accepted.

The core problem to this is one's own business world and the workers in one's country which make up a vocal population if they are hurt---can they take the pain and that pain always at least in the West translates to lost elections and again Putin/Russia understands this as well.

[AmericanPride]

A couple of thoughts on a few of your factors:

Nuclear weapons have value only insofar as the will exists to use them and a delivery platform exists to get them where one wants/needs.

Why aircraft carriers; why not boomers and attack subs instead? Is this meant to be a measure of force projection capability?
In a previous century, battleships proved to be a rather useless measure of power as neither side (in WWI at least) seemed willing to risk them very much. And , as the War of 1812 showed, size isn't all that matters--the frigate based US Navy was qualitatively superior although numerically inferior--better seamanship was only one of the reasons for the disparity. The sheer number of British ships and American risk aversion were significant factors in the turn around of the naval campaign in the latter part of the War of 1812, probably more so than the number of 1st rate ships of the line that Britain had.

Another thing for your consideration. Intangible and immeasurable things play a part in determining power. As the short little Corsican allegedly said, "In battle, the moral is to the physical as three to one." Things like "home field advantage" count.

Thanks for your feedback. As I stated, this is a work in progress. I still have to complete the extended 'soft power' scale, which I will look to how to measure the intangible as close as possible. I may convert some of the military factors into a composite index such as a collective nuclear capability (missiles, warheads, subs, etc) and naval power. I'm in my first year of my doctorate program, so this is a quasi-academic-personal project with no particular end-state in mind.

[wm]

I'm currently working on a quantitative assessment of national power (political, economic, and military) with an optional extended scale of science and social (soft power) dimensions. The intent is to capture the full breadth of a state's power.

I'd be interested to see what you use for assessing power and how you integrate the various elements to get an overall ranking.

I find interesting that you do not use the same factors of national power that the US uses --DIME vs. your PEM(SS).

I'd also like to point out that "power" rankings are often of little predictive value, as Ohio State and Cincinnati found out today in their NCAA Men's Hoops tourney games with Dayton and Harvard.