Throughout history military power has been paramount
and economic power a luxury. This has slowly changed to the point
that the two roles have been reversed. Japan, China and even the
United States have relied on economic prosperity to finance formidable
military forces. Conversely the Soviet Union, Iraq and North Korea
have relied on their military to build economic power with little
or limited success.
Economic power can be defined broadly as the capacity
to influence other states through economic means. It is composed
of a country's industrial base, natural resources, capital, technology,
geographic position, health system and eduction system. Military
power on the other hand is the capacity to use force or the threat
of force to influence other states. Components of military power
include number of divisions, armaments, organisation, training,
equipment, readiness, deployment and morale.
Military equipment, a key factor in military power
can be purchased from a range of countries. Russia, Israel and China
are willing to sell their hardware to almost any state in the world.
The United States, Japan and the European countries are more selective
in the countries they will sell to, but are still big arm's exporters.
All a state needs to purchase arms in the international marketplace
is hard currency. This allows states with economic power to easily
obtain military equipment. While the other aspects of military power
like training and morale are harder to obtain through conversion
of economic resources, it is not impossible. A well financed force
is able to send members overseas for training and pay its members
well. A highly paid soldier is likely to exhibit a high standard
of professionalism and have high morale. If a state has the economic
resources it should be able to increase its military power.
At the close of World War Two both the United States
and the Soviet Union found themselves in parallel positions of military
and economic power. Both arrived at this position largely through
converting their economic resources into military resources during
the war. The two superpower's actions in the next fifty years make
an interesting comparison.
The U.S.'s continued military dominance survived in
tact until the mid 1970s. During this decade it faced a major military
defeat but more importantly its economy stagnated. With a stagnating
economy the U.S. could not increase the amount it spent on its military
forces without serious domestic political difficulties. Only when
the economy picked up during the 1980s could the U.S. resume increasing
its military power.
Under the Regan administration 1981-1989 the U.S.
increased its military expenditure significantly and commenced the
key Strategic Defence Initiative. This project threatened to radically
alter the balance of power between the U.S. and the Soviet Union
by rendering Soviet intercontinental nuclear missiles ineffective
by means of a nationwide anti missile system. One of the aims of
the S.D.I. project described in a defence guidance document was
"to open up new areas of military competition and obsolescence previous
Soviet investment or employ sophisticated strategic deception options
to achieve this end." The S.D.I project was one aspect of the American
spend Moscow into the ground strategy. Under this strategy the U.S.
not only used economic power for conversion purposes but also as
a military weapon in itself. A weapon that proved extremely effective.
The Soviet Union employed a more unbalanced strategy
towards the growth of its military power. Soviet military industries
directly employed 10 million people including the most highly trained
scientists and the best educated workers. The military segment of
the economy accounted for 25% of the Soviet Union's gross national
product and half of all manufacturing in the Russian republic was
devoted to the military. This mindset relegated the expansion of
economic power to a second order priority. While this strategy worked
well for close to thirty years in the long run it was a failure.
By the 1980s the Soviet economy had deteriorated to such an extent
that it could no longer support the Soviet military machine let
alone help increase the country's military power.
Military crackdowns did however allow the Soviet Union
to maintain and prolong its economic power. In Hungary and Czechoslovakia
in 1956 and 1968 respectively, Soviet troops kept Eastern Europe
under Soviet control and hence in the Soviet economic block for
an additional twenty years. Eastern Europe rebelled again in the
late 1980s. By this stage Soviet economic power had declined to
a point that its political masters and citizens no longer had the
political will to use Soviet military power to suppress the rebellion.
