BY MENGESHA AMARE
Some are heard of saying that a country with well-organized and qualified military can seize the ladder to be globally powerful, but the question is does military power, which some call, the ultimate form of power in world politics, have potential to help a given country be a globally influential element?
The request ‘what makes some countries more powerful than others?’ has not yet been replied to. This is the most important question to be dealt with and related to the practice of international relations. As far as the global trajectory, especially in the present day is concerned, the accurate way to gauge the power of nations regarding grand strategy, alliance commitments, economic policy, and military procurement should be well looked into as these concepts badly need meaningful and vital decisions. No doubt, economic power is the ability of businesses, or individuals as well as countries to improve their standard of living and highly increases freedom to make decisions and reduces the ability of any outside force to infringe autonomy, so does military power for bringing about a thriving economy peculiarly centering the latter.
Yes, power is the most important variable in world politics, but not only does it depend on military muscle and army assets. Though power is regarded as a typically defined capacity or ability of a country to shape world politics in line with its interests, measuring this ability thoroughly is impossible, because doing so would require parsing other countries’ interests, influences over others and their wealth as well as potential resources keeping a number of international scenarios is an invaluable step to do so. Obviously, countries with more wealth and more military assets at their disposal tend to get their way more often than countries with fewer of these resources as the latter is susceptible to the tendency to be overshadowed by those who would like to buy influence through aid, loans, investment, and bribes as well as to cultivate soft power by funding global propaganda campaigns, building huge skyscrapers, and hosting international expositions, among others.
Undeniably, military resources such as combatants, weapons or modern artilleries enable a given country to destroy enemies, attract allies and extract concessions and kickbacks from weaker countries by issuing threats of violence and offers of protection. However, measuring power requires a systematic approach that involves observing international events—such as wars or diplomatic negotiations, allies and foes of a given nation—for determining the extent to which the participants shaped the outcomes in line with their respective interests. Hence, power alone does not determine outcomes as perseverance, luck, and wisdom do matter, too.
The number of possessions needed to generate a given level of force is mainly a function of skill and technology—a military with skillful military personnel and superior technology will use fewer resources to accomplish a mission than a military with low skill and outdated technology. Measuring security costs thus accounts for the fact that two nations with identical sets of gross resources may, nevertheless, wield vastly different levels of power if one country is surrounded by enemies and wracked by internal strife whereas the other is stable and surrounded by allies.
Needless to say, production, welfare, and security costs add up. In fact, for most of human history, they consumed nearly all of every country’s resources. Even today, they tie down large amounts of the world’s economic and military assets. Power ultimately depends on the ability to win major wars, and doing that requires a big army backed by a hefty military budget and substantial industrial might. Obviously, no measure of power will predict all dispute and war outcomes— resolve, strategy, luck, and selection effects also play a role. However, whether economic or military resources produce more power in today’s world depends on the context. A carrot is more effective than a stick if you wish to lead a mule to water, but a gun may be more useful if your aim is to deprive an opponent of his mule. Many crucial issues, such as financial stability or climate change, simply are not amenable to military force.
A successful economic model not only finances the military resources needed for the exercise of hard power, but it can also attract others to emulate its example. But the fact that military power is not always sufficient to decide particular situations does not mean that it has lost all utility, whereas there are more situations and contexts in which military force is difficult to use though it remains a vital source of power.
Editor’s Note: The views entertained in this article do not necessarily reflect the stance of The Ethiopian
THE ETHIOPIAN WEDNESDAY 15 MARCH 2023
