5 most strongest countries.

[Dissonance]

@fuzzypickles

South Korea’s in the running, but Japan’s been demilitarized since WWII ended. Only in recent years have they developed their own independent defense forces in addition to U.S.A. occupation.

Not true. Japan was only demilitarized from 1945-54. The Self Defence Forces were created in 1954 to get around Article 9. From the cite:

In theory, Japan’s rearmament is prohibited by Article 9 of the Japanese constitution which states: “The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes”, and also, “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.” In practice however, the Diet (or Parliament), which Article 41 of the Constitution defines as “the highest organ of the state power”, established the Self-Defense Forces in 1954. Although they are equipped as a conventional military force, they are by law an extension of the police force, created solely to ensure national security.

The Ground Self Defence Force has been an army since it was created, the Maritime SDF has been a navy, and the Air SDF an air force. The SDF was also created from the 110,000 strong National Safety Forces in 1954 which was itself created from the 75,000 strong National Police Reserve which was raised in 1950 and armed with light infantry weapons, so how demilitarized Japan actually was from 1950-54 is even debatable.

@xtisme

Before the first Gulf War Iraq was rated as the number 3 military power in the world (IIRC)…certainly in the top 5 at the time. The Chinese have and use (as the bulk of their main weapons systems) many of the same weapons the Iraqis had, and have comparable training overall.

I remember it as having the 3rd largest army in the world, which it did, at least in theory. Comparing training and equipment with Iraq is problematic; the truth is that Iraq has performed miserably in every war it’s fought in: the '67 and '73 wars with Israel, the war with Iran, and both of the wars with a US led coalition. Even the 1941 rebellion was a disaster for the Iraqi army from the get go despite heavily outnumbering the British forces. Whatever its flaws, the Chinese army did send the UN running back to the 38th parallel.

[XT]

[QUOTE=Dissonance]
I remember it as having the 3rd largest army in the world, which it did, at least in theory. Comparing training and equipment with Iraq is problematic; the truth is that Iraq has performed miserably in every war it’s fought in: the '67 and '73 wars with Israel, the war with Iran, and both of the wars with a US led coalition. Even the 1941 rebellion was a disaster for the Iraqi army from the get go despite heavily outnumbering the British forces. Whatever its flaws, the Chinese army did send the UN running back to the 38th parallel.
[/QUOTE]

Sure, but it cost the Chinese half a million lives to do it, and they had to catch the allied armies completely off balance and in a really bad logistical position to pull it off even then. Plus, where they were fighting is not exactly conducive to mobile maneuver warfare. And the US military of 1950 was closer to the Chinese, technologically (and training wise) than the Chinese of today are (overall) to the EU military powers. We had kind of let our military lapse after WWII, and though we had (some) jets and (some) marginally better armor, essentially we fought the Korean War with the same army (though less capable) as the one we fought WWII with.

You are right about the Iraqis…that’s why rating the various factors making up a countries military capability are so problematic, especially when the country in question (Iraq in this case) was so secretive. I think that Iraq got whatever military rating it had based solely on the numbers of tanks, gun tubes, jet fighters (generic) and troops it had under arms, without regard to how good any of that stuff would actually work in a real war situation. I think that some folks in this thread are making the same mistake, thinking that because China has a huge army that translates into military capability. That might be the case if someone was foolish enough to try and invade China, but for any realistic war not fought in that manner I don’t believe the Chinese military is capable of effectively fighting any of the major western military powers (hell, I don’t believe that, short of using nukes, the Chinese could successfully invade South Korea with any sort of expectation of winning, even if the US stayed out of it).

JMHO, but I look at the Chinese TOE and logistics assets and it doesn’t look all that impressive on any scale except sheer mass. And mass sucks today, since the motto seems to be (in modern western armies) that if you can see it, it’s probably already dead.

-XT

[msmith537]

@clairobscur

Nope. During the preparation phase of the first gulf war, Irak was suddenly presented as being the 3rd military power in the world. I remember it quite well. It had never been rated like that before. It was only a propaganda point made to depict this country as a very serious threat.

Did you forget the spelling of Iraq as well?

From Wikipedia: “The Iran–Iraq War ended in 1988 with Iraq fielding the world’s fourth largest military, with 49 army divisions, 6 Republican Guard divisions, an estimated 513 combat aircraft in the Iraqi Air Force, and a small navy.”

On paper, Iraq had an extremely large military and they had just finished an 8 year war with Iran.

[Cisco]

@msmith537

Did you forget the spelling of Iraq as well?

Who gives a fart? And I don’t think English is clairobscur’s first language.

[XT]

He’s French IIRC, and that’s the way he’s always spelled it. In fact, I think that a lot of non-Americans spell it that way.

ETA: msmith537’s main point is a good one, though. The rating wasn’t just some propaganda that was made up simply to get the US to respond to the invasion and annexation of Kuwait.

-XT

[Little_Nemo]

@msmith537

Did you forget the spelling of Iraq as well?

The correct spelling is العراق but that tends to slow down discussions. I believe clairobscur is French and Irak is the standardized transliteration of the country’s name into French. English speakers translate the name as Iraq instead.

[Cisco]

@msmith537

From Wikipedia: “The Iran–Iraq War ended in 1988 with Iraq fielding the world’s fourth largest military, with 49 army divisions, 6 Republican Guard divisions, an estimated 513 combat aircraft in the Iraqi Air Force, and a small navy.”

On paper, Iraq had an extremely large military and they had just finished an 8 year war with Iran.

Bill Hicks again:

“They went from the Elite Republican Guard, to the Republican Guard, to . . . . . . . . . The Republicans made this shit up.”

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Candyman74

It doesn’t need to be a match for current tech. It’s not like carriers get in cage matches with each other to prove who’s best; and they don’t fight each other directly. They carry planes which bomb land targets.

Carriers simply need to fulfill their function. The fact that someone else has a better one doesn’t stop the carrier doing that thing. Nations don’t line equally designated ship types up against each other in formation in order to cancel each other out.

No, but the point is that if you have the choice between spending $4 billion on an old aircraft carrier and a brand new one, the old one probably isn’t the way to go.

Buying the Russian carrier had the benefit that it was designed to carry MiG-29s and Kamov helicopters, which the Indian Air Force already operates (meaning maintenance and so on is cheaper) but the point remains.

[Lumpy]

@Dissonance

In theory, Japan’s rearmament is prohibited by Article 9 of the Japanese constitution which states: “The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes”, and also, “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.” In practice however, the Diet (or Parliament), which Article 41 of the Constitution defines as “the highest organ of the state power”, established the Self-Defense Forces in 1954. Although they are equipped as a conventional military force, they are by law an extension of the police force, created solely to ensure national security.

Hence, anime about police forces armed with tanks

[clairobscur]

@xtisme

Do you have a cite that this was a sudden and obviously propaganda driven elevation in their status?

No cite, indeed. All from memory, because it struck me as a difficult to swallow statement when it began to be mentioned, definitely during the preparation of Gulf War I, and never before (during the Iran-Irak war, for instance).

As for it being propaganda, it was just an assumption on my part at the time (and still now), because why otherwise would such a point be made?

The only possible way Irak could have had the 3rd military in the world would have been in sheer numbers (and I’m not even convinced it ranked that high. At least the USA, Russia and China had to have more soldiers).

Irak wasn’t able to score a victory against Iran, in a kind of WWI-style total war, despite receiving all sort of foreign support during it. This doesn’t look to me as the expected result for the world’s 3rd strongest military (except if we assume that Iran was the second or fourth world’s military power).

Before Gulf war I, I always seen Irak be mentionned as a strong regional power (probably the strongest in the middle-east), nothing more.

Not that ranking different countries military capability is a precise science, but Iraq DID have a really large standing army, using ‘modern’ Soviet tanks, planes, a large and capable artillery corp, and even logistics that at least allowed them to invade and crush Kuwait pretty easily (not that this was a difficult thing). I seem to recall the ranking came from Jane’s, though I might be misremembering…which is why I’m asking for a cite, since I really don’t know.

Simply building a carrier doesn’t give a navy an automatic mastery of the technology or training of your personnel to get the most out of it. Besides, I think there are several European countries with carriers already, or plans to build some (France is planning to build 1 or 2 supercarriers, aren’t they).

Also, having a carrier or two doesn’t give a country automatic power projection. You have to have the battle group to go along with it, including the ability to logistically support that carrier task group away from your home waters for extended periods of time. THAT is going to take the Chinese some serious time to perfect, and it leaves aside the other aspects of power projection, such as amphibious groups operations and the ability to support that as well. Just supplying and refitting the carriers and planes is going to be a much bigger challenge than I think a lot of folks realize for the Chinese. The US makes it look easy, but we’ve been doing carrier operations since there were carriers to do them with.

-XT
[/QUOTE]

[clairobscur]

Sorry for the previous, messed-up previous post, maybe a mod could delete it?

@xtisme

Do you have a cite that this was a sudden and obviously propaganda driven elevation in their status?

No cite, indeed. All from memory, because it struck me as a difficult to swallow statement when it began to be mentioned, definitely during the preparation of Gulf War I, and never before (during the Iran-Irak war, for instance).

As for it being propaganda, it was just an assumption on my part at the time (and still now), because why otherwise would such a point be made?

The only possible way Irak could have had the 3rd military in the world would have been in sheer numbers (and I’m not even convinced it ranked that high. At least the USA, Russia and China had to have more soldiers).

Irak wasn’t able to score a victory against Iran, in a kind of WWI-style total war, despite receiving all sort of foreign support during it. This doesn’t look to me as the expected result for the world’s 3rd strongest military (except if we assume that Iran was the second or fourth world’s military power).

Before Gulf war I, I always seen Irak be mentionned as a strong regional power (probably the strongest in the middle-east), nothing more.

or plans to build some (France is planning to build 1 or 2 supercarriers, aren’t they).

France used to have two, and intended to build two (the reason being that a carrier spends a lot of time being overhauled, etc.., so you need two to have always one available, and the former ones had been respectively dismantled and sold to Brazil). Due to the significant issues the first carrier had, the idea of building a second similar one was abandoned. Instead, the idea of cooperating with the UK was proposed. However, at this point, due to the financial crisis, it’s unlikely that this second carrier will be build in the near future.

Also, having a carrier or two doesn’t give a country automatic power projection. -XT

In fact, even with a fully operating carrier group, the only thing you have is the ability to project some airforce. That’s a long way from being able to send and supply a significant amount of troops.

For the record, French army’s stated goal is to be able to project 30 000 soldiers within 48h at a distance of 8 000 Km (and that’s in case of absolute, vital need. No way it’s intended for some oversea operation of “secondary” importance, like say Gulf War I). For operations at greater distances, if I’m not mistaken, the number has to be halved, and the build-up time is way, way longer (measured in weeks, if not months).

[devilsknew]

China, South Korea, and Japan in descendent order of reverse. America and Germany.

[clairobscur]

@msmith537

Did you forget the spelling of Iraq as well?

Iraq is spelled IraK in French, as several poster said, and I indeed keep forgetting it isn’t so in English.

[clairobscur]

By the way, regarding the OP :

Given that, as mentionned, it’s quite pointless to try to compare different standing armies that usually have different intended purposes (preventing a popular uprising, protection from a known potentially threat from a neighbour county, defending home waters, dettering a potential attack with the possession of nukes, projecting forces, etc…), my usual take is that I assume that every country organizes its military in the best way possible given its goals (of course that might be a bold assumption) with the means they have. Hence that countries military strenght can be quite safely ranked according to their military expenses.

Of course, that ranking would be relatively accurate only in conceivable real-life scenarios, no in some hypothetical where two armies would be magickally transported to some no-man’s land for a pitched battle, or be involved in some operation they were never intended to carry out and have no conceivable reason to be involved in (say, a Pakistanese attack against South-Africa, a Swiss naval force in the Indian Ocean, etc…).

[scabpicker]

It’s totally a diversion, but:

@clairobscur

No cite, indeed.

Well, one would be nice, because I think you’re wrong. I pretty clearly remember it being 4th, that number was based on raw numbers of troops.

In fact:

[QUOTE=Lt. Gen. Tom Kelley]

“Iraq went from the fourth-largest army in the world
to the second-largest army in Iraq in 100 hours”
[/QUOTE]

From here (backed up by here, for what it’s worth. Took about a second to come up with at least an unverified cite. The more trustworthy one took exactly one more search. Could you be bothered to check these things next time before believing them, much less trying to convince others?

As to their inability to conquer Iran: It’s a fairly difficult country to conquer. Its terrain is mountainous, and its population was very motivated at the time to not be conquered. Besides, Iraq’s leadership never struck me as brilliant.

As to the OP: Outside of a specific battlefield, it doesn’t matter. It’s not terribly unusual for a stronger force to be defeated by a weaker one.

[Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party]

That cite doesn’t support what was stated. What clairobscur was talking about was the claim that Iraq was the third strongest military power in the world. The cite says that Iraq had the fourth largest army in the world. Having a large army isn’t a measure of military strength. I think it’s plainly obvious that calling Iraq, prior to the Gulf War, the third largest military power in the world is a clear exaggeration.

[Starving_Artist]

@ITR_champion

Many Americans still fantasize about having an all-powerful military than can crush everybody and win every war in a few minutes. Amazingly enough, they believe this even after the spanking we’ve taken in the Middle East over the past decade.

What spanking? We effortlessly unseated the Taliban and drove it clean out of Afghanistan. The only reason it continues to be a problem is because we won’t go into Pakistan and mop it up there. And in Iraq, we wiped out Hussein’s army in three weeks. We probably could have kicked Iraq’s ass even quicker had we not been held back by our understandable reluctance to fire at chicken-shit Iraqi assholes using women and children as shields.

So we won the wars easily - and with fewer U.S. deaths than had been expended taking hills in WWII. It’s been the aftermath and occupation of those two countries that has been difficult, not the wars themselves.

ETA: I see that Iraq has already been covered. So, uh, nevermind, I guess.

[Strassia]

@xtisme

Do you have a cite that this was a sudden and obviously propaganda driven elevation in their status? Not that ranking different countries military capability is a precise science, but Iraq DID have a really large standing army, using ‘modern’ Soviet tanks, planes, a large and capable artillery corp, and even logistics that at least allowed them to invade and crush Kuwait pretty easily (not that this was a difficult thing). I seem to recall the ranking came from Jane’s, though I might be misremembering…which is why I’m asking for a cite, since I really don’t know.

Simply building a carrier doesn’t give a navy an automatic mastery of the technology or training of your personnel to get the most out of it. Besides, I think there are several European countries with carriers already, or plans to build some (France is planning to build 1 or 2 supercarriers, aren’t they).

Also, having a carrier or two doesn’t give a country automatic power projection. You have to have the battle group to go along with it, including the ability to logistically support that carrier task group away from your home waters for extended periods of time. THAT is going to take the Chinese some serious time to perfect, and it leaves aside the other aspects of power projection, such as amphibious groups operations and the ability to support that as well. Just supplying and refitting the carriers and planes is going to be a much bigger challenge than I think a lot of folks realize for the Chinese. The US makes it look easy, but we’ve been doing carrier operations since there were carriers to do them with.

-XT

@Candyman74

It doesn’t need to be a match for current tech. It’s not like carriers get in cage matches with each other to prove who’s best; and they don’t fight each other directly. They carry planes which bomb land targets.

Carriers simply need to fulfill their function. The fact that someone else has a better one doesn’t stop the carrier doing that thing. Nations don’t line equally designated ship types up against each other in formation in order to cancel each other out.

Carriers of any strip or build will get your planes near any coast as long your opponent does not have a significant submarine force. Almost any modern submarine can get close enough to any surface ship undetected to launch. Getting away after a launch may be difficult, but as long as one side has more subs then the other has carriers, the carriers will never get within range to launch. Even having friendly subs protecting the carriers is not necessarily going to protect them. Finding a submerged submarine is hard.
I think one factor that is hard to count is space. The U.S. clearly dominates, with Russia probably up next, but who else has sufficient space presence to make a difference? GPS, communications, and reconnaissance all are either dependent on satellites or greatly aided by them.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Starving_Artist

We effortlessly unseated the Taliban and drove it clean out of Afghanistan. The only reason it continues to be a problem is because we won’t go into Pakistan and mop it up there.

This is really, really wrong.

[Lumpy]

One reason the Iraqi Army was considered so formidable was not only it’s size but the presumption that it had a huge pool of “battle-hardened veterans” from the Iran-Iraq war. It turned out to be more “battle-weary”, but that was only in hindsight.