Maybe there are a few countries without militaries but i doubt it. Why bother having a military anyway if you don’t go to war or have military disputes? Some countries, as far as i can tell, have virtually no border disputes and even if they did why couldn’t they call in an allies military to help them out?
Im referring mainly to some developed countries with this. although, for all i know, there are alot of countries in latin america who don’t use their militaries much either.
Well, it’s only been sixty years or so since literally half the world was at war. The “Cold War” has only been over for about fifteen years. That involved a good-sized chunk of the developed world. Certainly, the possibility that the USSR would invade W. Germany through E. Germany and Poland was kind of remote, but the NATO powers justifiably felt the region needed to be armed to the teeth, as did the Eastern Block. That kind of massive military machine doesn’t just go away. Plus, I’d say the US has no border disputes of any kind, but we’ve got the biggest military on Earth. It’s not like Canada is going to invade. If Russia wants to pick a fight, they can just nuke us, and visa versa. Yet here we are, at war in two countries, planes, tanks, ships, people, and tens of billions of dollars flying all over the place.
Makes a guy wonder, don’t it.
[sub]Why does every country have a military?[/sub]
Simplified version:
Because virtually every nation to nation dispute in modern history has been settled by the use or threat of force. The guy with the most guns gets his way.
I was told that in order to be classified as a ‘country’ a place must have a military and a govornment.
Because pretty much every OTHER country has a military?
Because only a great fool would depend on the goodwill of others for their personal survival.
It’s now been fifteen years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, though. And with the rise and continuing expansion of the European Union, certain European countries really have zero probability of getting invaded anytime soon. Certainly nations such as the Netherlands and Portugal have sufficient diplomatic security that they don’t really need the threat of a military to deter invasions from across their borders. Yet even so, they all maintain a token military. As a percentage of GDP, their militaries are very small compared to America’s. I would imagine that in reality, it’s a prestige issue, in that some politicians simply want a small standing force maintained because they think it looks good. In a generation or two, however, that attitude might change and the forces of some European countries might fade slowly to zero.
Countries have armies because their neighbors have armies. And around and around it goes… It’s called the “security dilemma.”
IIRC, Costa Rica and Belize both lack an armed forces of their own. Belize is protected by the UK, IIRC.
So, is anyone going to confirm or deny what I was told? - that the definition of ‘country’ requires a military?
A bit like a car is a car because it has wheels (or an engine)
Oh, well. Fifteen years is obviously long enough to prove that we’ve moved beyond the armed conflict that has characterized human relations for milennia.
Even for nations that don’t need a military currently, they may in the future. And in the 21st century, you can’t just pass out rifles to the peasants and hope to defend your nation. You need to keep a certain national capacity to defend yourself; at least a small group of professional military people with transferable skills that could be the nucleus of a larger force should the need arise.
Costa Rica doesn’t have a military.
Prior to the 20th century many countries went for stretches of time without anything you could classify as a formal military. They mustered armies when threats arose.
Aside from the obvious self-defense reasons, a well-funded, permanant military makes up one half of the military-industrial complex that has fueled the economies of many, many nations for many, many years.
Why wouldn’t every country (or most) have a military? Looking around it seems like the west is the only part of the world community where some tinpot leader doesn’t arise every ten years or so and start eyeballing his neighbors’ property. Heck, it was only sixty years ago that the west had a couple of crackpots eyeing (and running over) their neighbors and it was just a little over ten years ago that Europe got to stop worrying about the Soviets. Overall lesson of world history is that if you don’t have an army that can hang with your neighbors natural selection kicks in and your country may go the way of the dodo, and nowadays that means a standing army.
And even if your neighbors are all friendly, having a strong military is a powerful political tool. Setting aside decades of sanctions for a moment, it does seem that the invasion of Iraq helped motivate Libya to end its nuclear weapos program (not that that justifies the invasion of Iraq in my mind, however).
Also, depending upon how developed a country is, having a military force that can be projected globally can be a political necessity or at least a good idea diplomatically. Japan was criticized for not helping more in Gulf War I and (IIRC) Afghanistan and so has sent troops into Iraq for this go-around. The fact that their constitution forbids them from entering into combat on foreign soil has not deterred their detractors. Another example, using Japan again, of having a military being politically a good idea is that after WWII Japan’s constitution forbade them from having a standing military, but the U.S. persuaded them to alter it to allow them a defense force in the hopes that it would help keep communist forces in check in the Pacific region.
Then there’s the question of self-respect. As in “What self-respecting country doesn’t have a military?” Not saying that that’s a good reason to have a military, but I can easily imagine that not looking like a pansy to themselves or their neighbors can be a pretty strong motivation.
Finally there’s the good old keeping the peace reason. Kinda hard to fight off a rebellion if you don’t have an army.
In spite of all that there are at least a few good reasons not to have a military, and all you have to do is look at Haiti for a primo example:
Although they still have a military on paper, every branch of it has been demobilized because they threw their President (Jean-Bertrand Aristide) out of office in the early nineties. He regained office in 2001 and one of the first things he did was shut down the military so they couldn’t challenge him again. Fat lot of good it did him though; Haiti currently has a rebellion on its hands and I’ll give you three guesses as to who the leaders of it are.
Lobsang, I checked dictionary.com, the OED, and Oxford’s Dictionary of Politics, and none of them stated what you said. However the ODP didn’t even have a definition of country in it so I went with nation-state instead. Hope that helps.
Countries have military forces because civilization is only a very fragile habit; because although we dare to dream that the map tomorrow will look the same as the map today, there are others who dream of changing it; because nobody wishes to be the second-to-last person to give up warfare.
Belize doesn’t have a military; Costa Rica doesn’t have a military; Iceland doesn’t have a military; the Republic of the Marshall Islands doesn’t have a military; Nauru doesn’t have a military. All are recognized sovereign nations.
Economists may be able to comment in more detail about this, but high military spending is a very poor way to stimulate an economy. While there certainly is technological spin-off (GPS, Internet, etc), keep in mind that countries with very high military spending (say, greater than 25 percent of GDP) have lousy economies, it seems by rule.
For example, I’m sure we can widely agree that the Soviet Union spent itself into oblivion trying to keep up with the West, and North Korea’s extreme level of military spending is actually a drag on its economy. In countless other third world countries, military spending can be very high as a percentage of GDP simply because the armed forces are sometimes the only truly national institution, not because it helps their economy.
If you happen to believe in Keynesian theories then military spending within your own economy can be an excellent way to stimulate your economy. Ask Reagan, unintentionally one of the greatest Keynesians of all time. 
But that’s a whole debate on its own…
BTW, most of the countries “without militaries” either (a) Have near-ironclad guaranteed defense agreements from someone else (Marshall Islands, Belize) or (b) have a well-equipped Coast Guard/Border Patrol that can handle the kids of threat that IS likely to happen(Costa Rica) or © both (Iceland).
Even the most peaceful microstate will have at least a police force to keep order (e.g. the Vatican’s Swiss Guard), and those will include SWAT or antiterrorist units to handle more violent threats.
To be realistic, in many countries, militaries (if not being the outright enforcers of dictatorship) actually function more like the National Guard of a state of the US in peacetime, something you keeep around to handle civil disorders, natural disasters, and search-and-rescue situations that are beyond the capabilities of the police, and only rarely call upon to actually address an external threat. Some nations honestly realize that their resources and population just can’t muster a force that could achieve anything more than a glorious, but fast, death, if attacked by someone with any real power projection capabilities, so they’re satidfied with Constabularies or Civil Guards or whatever. But most nations keep up the “military” establishment for prestige and for political reasons – such as the very important one of being able to conscript into those forces (police are civil servants, they’d be free to quit).
Costa Rica, because of a bad history with standing armies, decided to do away with the institution, if not the functions. The 1948 restoration of democracy was achieved with the help of part of the army, but the leadership thought to themselves waitaminnit, he who giveth can take away – specially with the Central American tradition of militaries with a “guardian” mentality stepping in if they did not like where the civilians were headed. So they dissolved the army and handed over the essential security duties to an agency under the Civil Service, where there would be no dobut it’s the elected politicians who call the shots.
Yet others, such as the Marshall Islands, are created w/o militaries. In the treaty that recognized Marshallese independence, the US negotiated in exchange for “strategic denial”, i.e. not letting any other power use their terrotory w/o US approval, the US would remain in charge of the MI’s defense.
In the United States, and most developed democracies, the military’s role is limited specifically to national defense. However in many countries in the “Third World”, the leadership uses the military to defend itself from internal rebellion or to keep the population in line. In some cases, it is simply a means to keep young men who often are capable of arming themselves loyal to the ‘regime’.
Also, in many smaller countries, the military may be responsible to highways, airports, meteorological data, disaster relief or emergency respose, and a variety of other tasks that are usually left to police, civilian agencies, or “national guard” type units in other countries.