In the past, I have made a number of posts comparing countries by GDP (Gross Domestic Product). I always use GDP (Nominal) vice GDP (PPP – Purchasing Power Parity). Some people have asked why I don’t use GDP (PPP). Well here is a youtube.com video based upon that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-2nqd6-ZXg
One will note that the video starts in 1800 with China by far the richest country in the world and India second. Yet during the 1800s the much poorer (by this video) United Kingdom already occupied parts of India and continued expanding their control. The “poorer” European powers then started carving up China. In 1937 the GDP (PPP) of Japan is 220 million while the GDP (PPP) of China is 530 million. Yet who is invading whom?
Here is a video based upon GDP (Nominal), covering 1960 -2017. It is curious as it leaves out the Soviet Union completely (but does include Russia): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wykaDgXoajc
Here is one on projected GDP (Nominal), projecting from 2018 to 2100: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9l2yCH5wBk
Some of these figures are hard to explain in light of the demographic challenges facing countries like China and Japan. In the case of China they will most likely experience negative population growth by 2030. Japan has already reached that point.
One must treat all this “infoporn” with considerable caution.
It does seem that PPP overinflates the appearance of national power, although it may be perfectly valid for measuring per capita income and comparative standards of living.
Well, in the first case market exchange rates may understate the resources that are allocated towards the war effort, while the latter incorporates the relative prizes of non commitment bundles that can influence the analysis by relying on irrelevant items (granted that the civil sector translates into the military sector). This still leaves the influence of the dollar as a world currency.
You need significantly more indicators than mere GDPs to assess military power, in both cases these tools are insufficient to deliver an adequate answer (not factoring out possible errors in wealth assessment and computations of “the great divergence”).
In this case market rates may give a better overview of the global influence of the respective player. What is required, is a military PPP in relation to government spending for each category (e.g. Capital, Operations).
http://cow.dss.ucdavis.edu/data-sets/national-material-capabilities
Thanks. I may comment on this in a later post.
Quite frankly, if the context is known and the conflict defined (e.g. conventional, attrition), Dupuy’s work is probably best suited to assess the potential.
For instance, with the avg. sustainability (15-21% GNP), for imperial and post imperial armies: Tentative national force effectiveness*total personnel fielded (or mobilized). 5% threshold (labour) for pre-industrialized era, 15-20% for industrialized.