THE MILITARY POWER OF GREAT POWERS AND THE LOSS OF UTILITY OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE GREAT MAJORITY OF THE COUNTRIES

Fernando Alcoforado*

This article, published on various websites in Brazil and abroad in Portuguese, English and French, aims to demonstrate that the great powers have acquired such military power that it has rendered the armed forces of the vast majority of the countries of the world useless. The deterrent military power against external threats from the vast majority of countries in the world has become irrelevant in the contemporary era with the use by the great powers of an immense arsenal of nuclear weapons and modern cyber war. The view that each country must have its armed forces to defend its territories to deter external threats has become irrelevant because the vast majority of countries in the world have armed forces based on obsolete structures from the past. This fact makes military spending in almost all countries in the world unproductive, making it unnecessary the existence of armed forces whose military spending should be used in economic sectors most relevant to the economic and social development of many countries.

The United States, Russia and China are the countries with the most powerful armies in the world today. Currently, a country’s military power is closely related to the availability of nuclear weapons, but also to the ability to develop cyber warfare. Science and technology are used by the great military powers in cyber warfare as one of the weapons of modern warfare. Cyber ​​war is based on information technology and, modernly, also on the advances provided by artificial intelligence. Cyber ​​warfare basically consists of using digital attacks for the purpose of espionage or sabotage against a country’s strategic or tactical structures. The espionage aims to steal tactical and strategic information such as data on the movement of troops, the strengths and weaknesses of the country’s war system and any other valuable information on resources needed for the war. In sabotage, it can range from a simple action like taking down servers on a government website to something extremely harmful like launching a nuclear warhead. Sabotage comes down to “doing something” as opposed to espionage, which comes down to “discovering something”.

The nuclear power and the ability to unleash the cyber war of the great powers makes the armed forces of other countries irrelevant since they would be unable to cope with the military power of the great powers (United States, Russia, China) and of medium military powers (United Kingdom, France, India, North Korea, Pakistan and Israel). This situation is quite evident in the case of countries that do not have nuclear weapons and are not capable of unleashing cyber warfare. Only countries like the United Kingdom, France, India, North Korea, Pakistan and Israel would be able to deter any threat against their countries because they have nuclear weapons. This is not the case in Brazil, which, in addition to being economically and technologically dependent on the outside, has armed forces unable to face any threat, especially from the great powers and not having nuclear weapons and not being able to unleash cyber war.

Recent facts demonstrate the inability of the armed forces of many countries to face the military might of the great powers. In 1982, in the Malvinas war, Argentina’s armed forces were defeated by those of the United Kingdom in a month and a half. In 2003, in the Iraq war, the United States, the United Kingdom and a handful of allied nations launched a heavy aerial bombing campaign against the main cities of Iraq, mainly Baghdad, and in less than a month they overcame the Iraqi army and succeeded occupy the country. In 2013, the United States government announced its intention to bomb Syria with the aim of overthrowing Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, which only did not happen because Syria had the military support of Russia. These examples demonstrate that countries that do not have deterrence will only be able to prevent their occupation by the great powers if they are allied with one of the great powers, as was the case in Syria.

Brazil, for example, is a country that has no means of deterring any external threat and does not have the resources to achieve the power to deter any threat. In view of this fact, Brazil’s military spending is almost entirely unproductive. Brazil’s military defense will not be able to be strengthened by allocating 80% of the military budget to personnel expenses (salaries, retirement, among others) that have been at this level since 1999 to the detriment of investments in military technology. Just to compare, in France the percentage of spending on personnel has dropped almost continuously, reaching 46% in 2016. A rational attitude in the contemporary era would consist of drastically reducing military spending in Brazil to allocate part of these resources destined to the maintenance of the armed forces for another more productive end, which is to participate in the fight against terrorism, in rescue and relief in the event of disasters, in humanitarian assistance such as in combating the pandemic of the new Coronavirus and in the reconstruction in the face of calamities. In turn, Brazil’s foreign policy should be centered on the fight for world peace and disarmament, especially nuclear, in the face of the country’s inability to deter external threats from the large and medium military powers.

From the above, it is evident the immense military power of the great powers and the inability of countries like Brazil to deter external threats. For Brazil to acquire the capacity to dissuade the great powers, it would have to be the holder of nuclear weapons and the capacity to unleash cyber war, a difficult condition to be implemented because the country does not have the resources to achieve this objective. It is an anomaly that needs to be eliminated in Brazil, for the country to assume high military expenditures like the current ones when there are needs in important sectors of national life such as education, health, science and technology, environment and national economy. It makes no sense for the country to assume extremely high expenditures to maintain unproductive armed forces like that of Brazil, unable to deter external threats. The rational attitude would be for the Brazilian government to drastically reduce military expenditures to allocate these resources to the most needy sectors in Brazil and, in the future, to stop having armed forces as did Costa Rica (that have not had them since 1949), Liechtenstein (that have not had them since 1868), Samoa Islands, Dominica, Tuvalu, Vatican City and Grenada.

This is a summary of the article whose full text can be read by accessing the websites Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/falcoforado/), Academia.edu (https://www.academia.edu/45564312/THE_MILITARY_POWER_OF_GREAT_POWERS_AND_THE_LOSS_OF_UTILITY_OF_THE_ARMED_FORCES_OF_THE_GREAT_MAJORITY_OF_THE_COUNTRIES), SlideShare (https://pt.slideshare.net/falcoforado/the-military-power-of-great-powers-and-the-loss-of-utility-of-the-armed-forces-of-the-great-majority-of-the-countries-of-the-world), Twitter @BLOGFALCOFORADO (https://twitter.com/ blogfalcoforado) and the website <https://fernandoalcoforado.academia.edu/research&gt;.

This same article was published on those same websites in Portuguese with the title O PODER MILITAR DAS GRANDES POTÊNCIAS E A PERDA DE UTILIDADE DAS FORÇAS ARMADAS DA GRANDE MAIORIA DOS PAÍSES and in French with the title LE POUVOIR MILITAIRE DES GRANDES POUVOIRS ET LA PERTE DE UTILITÉ DES FORCES ARMÉES DE LA GRANDE MAJORITÉ DES PAYS as we have done with previously published articles.

* Fernando Alcoforado, 81, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic  planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017),  Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).