Military

5 Overlooked Militaries Punching Above Their Weight

Austin Smith

Published: October 21, 2024 11:30 am

Key Points:

• Japan, Australia, and India are strengthening their militaries with tech and alliances.
• Italy is boosting its NATO role with advanced naval and air assets.
• Brazil is increasing defense spending, especially on submarines.
• Also: Start here to retire rich!

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Edited Video Transcript:

Let’s bring it home here, talking about underrated militaries. What are some militaries that maybe punch above their weight in certain dimensions that are not obvious to us as outside observers?

Yeah, well, we actually already mentioned Japan, but I think Japan… I would argue is probably one of the, you know, because underrated is a very subjective term.

But I’m taking it in terms of when we talk about the major sort of military powers in the world, these are the ones that tend to get overlooked. That’s how I’m interpreting it anyway.

And I think Japan is an example of a past military power that seems to be on the rise again because of this revision to what they mean by self-defense and this investment that we’re seeing across the board.

Again, as we said, Two percent of Japan’s GDP is a gigantic sum of money. They’re obviously facing demographic problems, but that is still a gigantic economy. And two percent of that is a very huge sum of money indeed.

But another nation I think is worth bringing up is Australia. This is a country with a very small population in global terms, but they have a really decorated military history.

If you look at what the Australian troops did in World War I, World War II. In fact, in World War II, I think it was, the population back then was only about seven million and they had about one million people serving, which is the biggest proportion of personnel out of the allies.

It was huge mobilization.

For Australia, I think it’s just quality beats quantity there. As climate change is happening, they’re increasing their naval presence. They’re part of AUKUS.

with a trilateral security agreement with the UK and the United States. And part of that is building up their submarine capabilities.

They are helping with the security situation in the Pacific. Their land forces are pretty small, but that’s always gonna be the case.

Their air force relative to the size of their population is huge. They’ve one of the biggest operators of F-thirty fives in the world.

When you consider just I think the population is fewer than thirty million and they have a huge number.

So they have very high quality equipment, very well trained personnel. They’re only limiting factors. There’s so few of them, but they have consistently punched well above their weight historically and in the present.

Another nation that I think ranks highly but doesn’t really get brought up an awful lot would be India.

In terms of, I’d say you kind of have your big three, the United States, China, and Russia. And there’s huge gaps between each of them.

And then after that, I’d say it’s India. India are kind of like best of the rest.

Their only real limiting factor right now is a lack of fifth generation aircraft.

Um, they have the means to gain that there was discussions, um, with Russia, I think for the, um, SU-fifty seven, if I remember correctly, um, they didn’t think it was, uh, suitable for their future needs.

Um, but they do have the capacity to invest heavily. Um, and one of the big limiting factors we talked about before was population.

Well, that’s definitely not an issue for India. Um, even though their fertility rate is in decline, it’s at a much slower rate than other nations in the world.

Obviously their economy isn’t as developed as other nations, but I think they’re kind of, they could be described as almost superpower in waiting. I don’t know if they’re ever going to reach that status, but they have the potential.

It would seem if anyone is going to get there, it will be them.

As you mentioned, they have population. They have a really strong developed tech sector and tech economy.

We’ve seen a willingness and a desire to stand independent of China and Russia in the region, although they do buy Russian oil.

There are border tensions with China. As China strengthens, India wants to strengthen as well.

And it would seem that India, where we had talked about North Korea, South Korea, South Korea has the technological advantage. North Korea has its massive standing army, which sort of are these counterbalancing forces.

India can kind of play both sides of that, where they have this huge population, they have a growing economy, they have tech advantages.

It does seem, at least based on where the table is set today, that if there are additional military superpowers entering the arena, India has got to be the next one.

Yeah, possibly. But again, anything can happen.

Yeah, but they have this… They’ve always kind of pursued a non-aligned course since gaining independence.

During the Cold War, they never really fully backed one side or the other.

And they were one of the few nations that could really truly stand their own.

So it will be interesting to see what happens there in maybe the next twenty years if they do you know, kind of reach that superpower status or if they’re always just kind of just short of it.

But yeah, in terms of militaries around the world, I’d say they’re a pretty clear fourth right now.

If we’re talking about other nations with less decorated military histories, Italy, almost a punchline in the twentieth century, you know, performed very poorly in World War One, World War Two.

But and they still don’t make that two percent goal as a member of NATO. But something they’ve been really focusing on is high quality procurement.

um you know they are really they have a pretty well-balanced navy um they’re investing in their air force um investing in the army and the air force they’re taking a leading role in nato operations in mediterranean um so i think that’s another sort of power on the rise um that maybe isn’t highly regarded

i think if i looked if i remember correctly from the global firepower index which is again there are limitations to that we shouldn’t take that as gospel but They have overtaken France quite recently on those rankings.

Again, take that with a pinch of salt. But I would say that, yeah, Italy are probably one of the main rising powers outside of Poland, for example, in Europe.

A really surprising name on the list, to be sure. And maybe demonstrating that military, let’s say armaments can, you know, Newer technology, newer vehicles, newer missiles, as you said, high quality procurement can allow you to punch above your weight, which is sort of a recurring theme that we’ve seen, right?

If you have the right equipment, you can actually extend what is a smaller population or a smaller economic base even, or even a smaller manufacturing capability.

I go back to it again and again, but Ukraine, Russia sort of shows the value of high quality equipment. So Italy maybe being a surprising dark horse there.

And you have one more, which is one that I would not have guessed. Who is another underrated military out there today?

Well, this was a nation which has a large population, a growing economy and access to natural resources.

But they have always been considered a soft power. And that’s Brazil.

And when I say soft power, that’s a concept That’s come in the wake of World War II.

It’s the idea that a nation can exert influence through culture, through diplomacy, through trade.

So Brazil’s always been pretty high on that.

But lately, they have been investing heavily in the military. They’re another nation that’s actually using two percent as a guideline for defense spending.

And for a long time, they were nowhere near that.

One of the main areas of investment, which seems to be a recurring theme around the world, is they’re investing quite heavily in submarines.