Top 10 Powerful Countries in the World 2020

Top 10 Powerful Countries in the World 2020

• United States


• Russia


• China


• Germany


• United Kingdom


• France


• Japan


• India


• Saudi Arabia


• South Korea

It may be half a year away, but military planners around the world are always looking ahead, and the year 2020 will prove pivotal for many of the world's militaries. With the possibility of another major conflict in Europe brewing, and China seeking to economically damage the US for its support of Taiwan, national priorities have been shifting for the last year, and who ends up at the top of the world's military dog pile in 2020 may just surprise you.

5. France

France looks set to retain its spot in the world's top 5, even despite very strong gains on the behalf of the Japanese military which currently sits- and is set to remain at- the number 6 spot. The United States has long complained of European nations not meeting the NATO goal of 2% of GDP spent on defense, which is meant to ensure that NATO remains strong without the need for the US to carry most of the burden. France has officially stepped up to that challenge, aiming to hit 2% of GDP by 2020 or 2025 at the latest. With the current French budget at 42.2 billion dollars, they are currently hitting a mark of 1.82% of GDP, putting them leaps and bounds ahead of most other NATO members. Part of that increased budget is going towards overseas operations- namely peacekeeping and anti-terror operations in Africa. While money spent on active operations won't be used for procuring new hardware or training new troops, ongoing overseas campaigns do provide the French military with critical battlefield experience and greatly increases the proficiency of not just individual soldiers, but the military on the whole. It is this on-going real-world experience in the very difficult task of carrying out full-domain operations around the world that is expected to propel France into the number four spot as a military power shortly, dislodging India from its current perch. Major procurements by the French military will also boost its capabilities and firepower though, with the planned purchase of 10 more mirage 2000D fighters. France's current fighter jet procurement is slow and limited as it continues to evolve its Rafales 4.5 gen fighters. Though not nearly as stealth-capable as the F-35, the Rafale has proven to be an extremely capable fighter with some impressive electronic warfare capabilities. In the near to mid-term future, France plans on rolling out a sixth-generation fighter in cooperation with Germany, further securing its slow but steady climb up the world power ladder. Featuring one of the world's best military-industrial complexes, France is set to remain a military heavyweight, but will eventually outclass India simply by its ability to innovate at home. As the backbone of most European Union forces, the French have vast experience in low to medium intensity conflicts, and while the nation hasn't been tested in high-intensity combat since the 1950s, its arsenal of modern and very capable tanks, artillery, and ships make France the European Union's reigning military power, and one of the United State's most important allies.

4. India

India currently enjoys the number four spot amongst military powers, yet its long-time hold on the fourth rung of the top five ladders tenuous and being aggressively challenged by France. While its longtime rival, China, maybe ranked higher than it in the power spectrum, India has one thing going for it that China does not: a great amount of experience at various levels of combat intensity. It has for a long time dealt with an ongoing Maoist insurgency at home, and its military intelligence services have a great deal of experience detecting and foiling terror plots which are often directly backed up or orchestrated by the Pakistani intelligence services. They also have a history of high-intensity conflict against Pakistan, and though its last war against Pakistan was in 1971, the Indian military has continued a long-standing tradition of strenuous and realistic training programs for its naval, army, and air forces. Currently, India's major weakness is a relatively weak domestic arms industry, but that too is changing- albeit likely too slow to prevent France's eventual replacement of India as the world's 4th most formidable military power. One of India's major advantages over any other nation though is its ambivalent relations towards all major powers around the globe, which allows its military to purchase equipment from Russia, Europe, Israel, and the UnitedStates. This allows the Indian military to pick and choose the absolute best fit for its requirements in any category of military hardware, and while that may hurt with equipment standardization issues, it gives India the pick of the litter when it comes to cutting edge military tech. China's aggressive expansion into the SouthChina Sea has seen India gradually shift closer and closer towards the United States, but just in case of war with China without any foreign aid, India is set to continue to grow the strength of its fleets. India's geographic position has been likened to 'standing on China's jugular', thanks to the fact that the majority of China's imports and exports all flow through the Indian ocean. This has placed a need on India to develop a more capable fleet than China, as in any war India's navy would be enemy number one for the Chinese military.

3. China

Currently, China is set to retain its number three spot, with a rather large gulf separating itself from India at the number four spot. Yet in the future, possibly as soon as 2030, China will almost definitely overtake Russia for the number two spot as the second most powerful military force in the world. Currently, China fields one of the largest armies on earth and has an almost unlimited pool of manpower to call upon if war fares poorly. The modernization of the Chinese military is a wonder in and of itself, having operated a large, if mostly backward, ground force up until the 1990s. For decades China focused on fielding a massive army capable of repelling another invasion by hostile foreign powers, yet as China's economy began to rise, so did its reliance on overseas trade. This quickly led to a critical need to secure that overseas trade, and thus the focus shifted from China's army to its air and naval forces. Today China is seeking to desperately make up for shortfalls in equipment in terms of ships and planes versus its projected current and future rival, the United States. The Chinese Navy, currently a force only truly capable of defensive operations close to Chinese shores, is looking to become a true 'bluewater' navy that can conduct global naval operations. That, however, will require a major expansion of its naval carrier forces, and it's hoped that by 2030 the Chinese navy will field two fully-operational aircraft carriers- which still places it far short of the US's carrier fleet of 11 full-sized carriers and nine smaller carriers capable of carrying up to 20 vertical take-offs and launch aircraft each. China is also looking to make huge gains on its fleet of 76 submarines, which will put it on course to rival US submarine power by2030. However, on both of these critical fronts, China faces serious problems. Firstly, its projected purchases of aircraft carriers will be of the ski-jump assisted take-off design like the Type 001 and Type002- this means that Chinese carriers will be limited to launching smaller jets with smaller payloads than the US. Secondly, though China may achieve a numerical superiority to the US in submarines, Chinese submarines are notorious for being considered the noisiest in the ocean and very easy to track. Technological limitations will no doubt be broken in time, but China still faces serious issues in realistically challenging the UnitedStates. It has not fought a major military operation since a brief conflict with Vietnam in 1979, and despite its growing arsenal of modern weapons, its ability to coordinate all of those weapons in a modern combat environment doubtful. Its military is still plagued by corruption issues stemming from the longtime practice of selling military ranks off by communist party officials, and its troops have routinely and woefully underperformed under realistic training scenarios.

2. Russia

Russia continues to hang on to its number two spot as the world's second most powerful military in 2020, yet its hold is tenuous at best, and there is little doubt that by 2030 Russia will drop to the number three spot as China rises to claim the number two position in the military dogpile. A former global superpower, the fall of the Soviet Union devastated the Russian military, and it has since spent almost twenty years trying to reinvent itself as a modern and capable force. After a humiliating performance against Chechnyanrebels in the 1990s, the Russian conflict against Georgia offered a new opportunity for the Russian military to prove to the world that it had picked itself up from the rubble of the Soviet Union to become a modern military power. While Russian forces quickly crushed Georgianresistance as many had predicted, the brief war did showcase several fundamental weaknesses of the Russian military- many of which it has still failed to address. Where Russia exceeds though, it does so stunningly. The military of 2020’s Russia continues to field the best air defenses in the world, with the family of S-300, S-400, and the newS-500 anti-air missile systems making up the backbone of Russian air defenses. Long-delayed, the S-500 is expected to rival the American THAAD- or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system. Unlike the American THAAD though, the S-500will be able to engage both ballistic missiles and hypersonic cruise missiles and aircraft, with the projected ability to shoot down even low orbiting spacecraft. Russia is also set to lead the world in electronic warfare capabilities, with a host of new EW systems even today entering service. Facing the threat of American networked weapons, Russia quickly shifted priorities from trying to match the firepower of these weapons instead of trying to disrupt them and has historically fielded some of the best EW assets in the world. Conflicts in Ukraine and cyber operations against NATO and the US show that Russia maintains a keen edge in electronic warfare operations and everything from disrupting enemy communications to directly hacking foreign adversaries. Unfortunately, Russia faces several crippling problems which will all-but-guarantee its eventual downfall to the number 3 spot, and chinas ascension to number 2. Most glaring of these problems is the fact that the bulk of the Russian military continues to be very poorly trained and low-morale conscripts, and despite several initiatives to create an all-volunteer force like the United States, Russia is still only able to field a low number of volunteer troops- which it considers its elite forces. Another problem Russia faces is the continued collapse of its economy thanks to international sanctions against it and a lack of diversification amongst its economy. Russia's economy has stagnated so drastically that the majority of its economy is now directly tied to energy, and thus is highly vulnerable to disruptions in global energy markets. As the world shifts to renewable sources of energy, Russia's stagnant economy will only worsen as exports of oil and natural gas dwindle-unless of course Russia manages to find a way to convince the international community to lift much of its sanctions against it. That would require a commitment to good behavior versus its neighbors that it seems to loathe to commit to though, and seems unlikely. By 2030 Russia will remain a formidable military power equipped with select pieces of excellent military hardware, but fielding a force that is overwhelmingly poorly equipped and can't afford large numbers of critical next-generation weapon systems such as the indefinitely postponed 5th generation Su-57 and T-14 Armata tanks-neither of which will be built in numbers larger than a token demonstration force.

1. The United State

The United States will continue to remain the world's number one military power by a large margin in 2020, and even in the decades to come is set to remain markedly apart from its near-peer competitors, China and Russia. A variety of factors determine the US's continued dominance, yet its greatest asset is its robust and diversified economy. Such strong economic performance allows them to field the most capable military in the world, and a carefully cultivated system of alliances throughout the globe see it work together with many regional partners to contain would-be threats. This, even more so than American firepower alone, is what truly makes the American military a global leader. Plagued by problems, the F-35 is nonetheless slated to enter full production sometime in 2020, and present bugs continue to be ironed out of the design. The F-35 is widely misunderstood though and often derided for shortcomings in scenarios it was never designed to enter into. Widely known to be an inferior dogfighter, the F-35 is instead meant to operate as a long-range assassin with a first-look-first-kill capability and the greatest networked capabilities of any other platform in the world. Despite this, though the F-35 is having the most troubled rollout of any weapons program in US history, and many planes from the first few procurement waves are not likely to last their planned operational lifetime- further adding to the cost of the most expensive weapons program in history. This has the potential to leave the US critically short of much-needed air assets during an emergency and is a contingency for which it still has no solution. Thanks to a reinvigorated defense budget, the US will also ensure that it maintains adequate numbers of attack submarines of the new Virginia class, widely considered the best submarine design in operation other than the vaunted Seawolf-class- a Cold War American sub that is nonetheless considered even more capable than modern Virginia class subs, and of which the US maintains three in operation for its most critical and sensitive undersea operations. With near-peer competitors such as Russia and China making big technological strides to catch up with American capabilities, anew emphasis on a third offset strategy has seen billions spent on next-generation tech. Future US military goals for winning or deterring a major war are focused on artificial intelligence, increasing the networked capabilities of American weapon systems, reducing the vulnerability of the US and its allies to the loss of space-based communications and recon assets, and big investments into undersea warfare systems such as unmanned submarines. Facing the threat of mission kills against its carriers by Chinese ballistic missiles, the US Navy has also focused on a distributed firepower capability, which would allow any ship in its fleet, via networking, to engage a variety of targets with their own- or other ship's- weapon systems. The world of 2020 looks to remain ruled by the same military powers as today, yet very shortly major changes to the world's top 5 militaries will see the balance of power shift dramatically. France's ascension over India to the fourth spot of the top 5 signals a renewed capability for Europe to defend itself, something that has long been calling for after decades of footing the majority of the cost of Europe'sdefense against the Soviet Union and Russia. China's ascension over Russia to the number2 spot also signals a dramatic change in the global order, as Russia's economy continues to contract and shrink the nation's military power, even as China completes its incredible modernization initiatives. Hopefully, the shift in the world's top five military powers will be a peaceful one, and not herald the brewing of a new global conflict-the the entire point of military power in our modern world is to prevent and deter war, not to cause it. Who do you think will be in the top 5 by 2030? Why or why not?

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