Military

These Countries Armies Are Getting Weaker

Austin Smith

Published: October 21, 2024 10:30 am

Key Points:

• UK and France face economic struggles and recruitment issues, limiting military growth.
• Pakistan and Egypt’s economic crises weaken military strength and regional stability.
• Declining military influence globally may undermine overall security.
• Also: start your retirement plan today!

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Edited Video Transcript:

What about the other side? Which countries’ militaries are getting weaker?

Yeah, I think it might be fair to say which militaries are strengthening or their relative position, although they are still spending more on defense, but they are kind of sliding down the sort of pecking order.

As everyone else gets stronger, they are relatively less capable. They’re not getting stronger fast enough, might be a more accurate way to put it.

But if we’re talking about sort of who’s the sort of top ten, who’s not.

Yeah, I think if we’re talking in that sense, I think Britain and France are probably two major military powers that are not strengthened and quick enough to keep pace with everybody else. And their problems are quite similar.

So Britain has pretty much always met that two percent spending goal. It’s steady. It’s increasing very slightly next year.

But they have two major problems right now for the military. Number one is just a dire economic situation exacerbated by Brexit.

Many years of austerity under a Conservative government isn’t helping either.

But the new Labour government isn’t really going to dramatically change that trajectory.

So the economy is contracting.

Secondly, and this has always actually been a problem for Britain’s military, is it’s not the quality, it’s the quantity. Severe manpower shortages.

So between this year and last, the number of military personnel has decreased by six thousand, and it was already small.

They’re having real problems with recruitment and retention. They’re overstretched. They’re maintaining a global presence with a tiny military.

And France is having a similar situation. They’re also having major economic struggles, a lot of political instability at home, limited means to increase military spending without detracting from social spending, which is obviously going to make that political instability that much worse.

They’re overstretched as well. Now, I think it was only two or three years ago, there were about five or six thousand military personnel from France employed in West Africa.

Today, that number is closer to six hundred. So they are contracting.

And just like the British, in fact, this is actually almost a continental problem. It’s recruitment and retention.

Military personnel is becoming increasingly difficult to fill the ranks.

So even though the uh the defense spending is increasing across the board it’s becoming much more difficult to you know to fully man the army uh to fully man armed forces in both of these countries.

a couple of other powers that are sort of in decline or not growing fast enough would be egypt and pakistan these are two countries where the military pretty much runs the show but they’re having real economic problems so pakistan is actually Now, when we compare militaries, it’s quite difficult to do so.

One of the analytical tools a lot of people use is something called the Global Firepower Index, which is an annual study that compares military capabilities of different nations around the world based on different factors like population, like military equipment, ability to wage war, those sort of things.

So Pakistan frequently ranks in the top ten. That’s largely because of their nuclear weapons program, which they initiated at enormous cost.

If I remember right, I can’t remember the name of the president who said this.

This was in nineteen sixty five. He said because India were developing nuclear weapons as well in the early nineteen sixties, which they got in the seventies.

In fact, I’ll just get that name in front of me now.

Yeah, President Bhutto, I think it was in nineteen sixty five, said his people would eat grass and leaves if it meant getting nuclear weapons.

And if you look at the GDP per capita, they’re not too far off that there’s been a cooling of relations with the United States.

They’ve got real border security issues and the economy is really underdeveloped. GDP per capita there is about fourteen hundred per person.

So we’re talking vast amounts of poverty in that nation. So their overall power is strong, but If you look at the actual military budget, I think it’s about six billion, which in global terms is tiny.

But that’s just a reflection of a really troublesome economic situation.

Egypt’s the same in the sense that their military runs everything. They’re initiating some gigantic construction projects.

The military gets a piece of everything that they do. The global pandemic was a disaster for for Egypt because a lot of their government’s revenue comes from the Suez Canal.

And obviously, during the pandemic, there was a massive reduction.

And now we’re seeing attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, which is having a further knock on effect.

I think if I remember correctly, it’s the decline in revenues about forty four percent year on year in the last year.

So that’s very difficult to handle. They’re going through a major economic crisis.

And obviously we had the, you know, was it ten, twelve years ago with the Arab Spring and all the instability that brought the army still runs things there.

But I think there are some efforts by the IMF to bail them out, even though They’re not really addressing the problems, but Egypt is essentially a country that is, I think the quote I read was too big to fail.

So they’re a bit of a basket case, but they’re so necessary to global trade that they’ll be bailed out.

But they’re another power that’s kind of contracting.

And boy, what a rough time for them to be contracting, just given their position in the world, you know, but as not only with the Suez Canal, but sort of a Western ally of sorts and this potentially, you know, stabilizing really critical force in the Middle East.

Egypt needs to have a strong military right now, perhaps more than ever, just given all the instability around them and their ability to potentially, you know, cool, cool conflict in the area if they’re not able to to quell tensions in their neighboring countries, you know.

We lose a great potential force there.