The OP’s list includes countries with nuclear weapons. That’s just not in the same category as a country without.
You mean a diëresis?
I went with Japan, Turkey, Israel, and South Korea. FWIW I did start by excluding countries with nukes, since that’s an automatic game over should those countries ever get invaded and start to lose on their home territory.
I believe second strike capability (i.e. a country’s assured ability to respond to a nuclear attack with powerful nuclear retaliation against the attacker) as per the Asia Power Index is a good gauge of a relative military power. This is the ranking:
I like this. Alternatively, we could say :
- Superpowers - countries that dominate the entire world
- Great powers - countries that strongly influence the entire world.
- Middle powers - countries that have a real but limited influence on the entire world.
- Minor powers - countries that influence surrounding countries, but little beyond that.
- Non-powers - everyone else.
And it’s interesting to note that some countries can be both of these. Canada has a limited influence that can affect the whole world, at least in that we put peacekeepers all over the place, and have been involved in more than one major war far from our own borders. But we can’t really be considered a “minor” power on this scale, because our only “surrounding” country would be the United States, over whom we have only the influence they let us have.
Yeah, I noticed the same thing.
Being a great power used to be much more meaningful before there were superpowers.