The document discusses the military power of great powers like the US, China, and Russia and how their immense military spending and modern weapons have rendered the armed forces of most other countries irrelevant. It analyzes the military expenditures, forces, and strategies of the US, China, and Russia, identifying them as the preeminent global military powers due to their large defense budgets and advanced capabilities. The document also examines how these countries' economic strength underpins their military power and how cyber warfare has become an important new domain of military conflict.

1. 1
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
Fernando Alcoforado *
This article aims to demonstrate that the great powers have acquired such military power
that it has rendered the armed forces of the vast majority of countries in 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 of 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 military power of a country concerns the set of organizations for the defense and
combat of a country made up of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast
Guard, but also by the Space Force focused on war in space and for the ability to unleash
cyber war in the case of the great powers (United States, Russia and China). The military
power of each country is expressed by the size of military spending and its relation to
GDP, as shown in Table 1 and Table 2.
Table 1- Military expenditures by country
Position Country
Spending
(US$ billion)
% do GDP
World total 1.686 2,2
1 United States 611,2 3,3
2 China 215,7 1,9
3 Russia 69,2 5,3
4 Saudi Arabia 63,7 10
5 India 55,9 2,5

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6 France 55,7 2,3
7 United Kingdom 48,3 1,9
8 Japan 46,1 1,0
9 Germany 41,1 1,2
10 South Korea 36,8 2,7
11 Italy 27,9 1,5
12 Australia 24,3 2,0
13 Brazil 22,8 1,3
Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
2017 Fact Sheet (para 2016) - SIPRI Military Expenditure Database
Table 2- Military expenditures by country
Position Country
Spending
(US$
billion)
1 United States 597,5
2 China 145,8
3 Saudi Arabia 81,9
4 Russia 65,6

3. 3
5
United
Kingdom
56,2
6 India 48,0
7 France 46,8
8 Japan 41,0
9 Germany 36,7
10 South Korea 33,5
11 Brazil 24,3
Source: International Institute for Strategic Studies. Top 15 Defense Budgets 2015.
Tables 1 and 2 show that the United States, China and Russia are the largest military
powers on the planet because their military expenditures are much higher than those of
other countries in the world. Defesanet article informs on the website
<https://www.defesanet.com.br/bid/noticia/36563/SIPRI---Gastos-Militares-Globais-
alcancaram-U$-1-9-Trilhao-em-
2019/#:~:text=Os%20gastos%20militares%20dos%20Estados,38%25%20dos%20gasto
s%20militares%20globais> that US military spending totaled US$ 732 billion in 2019
which represented 38% of global military spending.
The article entitled "Os 23 exércitos mais poderosos do mundo em 2021" (The 23 most
powerful armies in the world in 2021), published on 2 March 2021 on the website
<https://www.maioresemelhores.com/exercitos-mais-poderosos-do-mundo/>, informs
that the The United States, Russia and China are the countries with the most powerful
armies in the world today. This ranking is defined by Global Firepower, an analytical
portal of 139 military forces around the world based on data such as number of soldiers,
reservists, air force, equipment, annual military budget, among others. The data are as
follows:
1. United States of America
The United States is the country with the most powerful and strongest army in the world.
This happens, because in addition to having the third largest army in number of active
soldiers, it is also the one that most invests in the armed forces. The country invests US$
740 billion in the army, while China, the second largest investing country, has a budget

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of US178 billion. The United States also has the most advanced technology for combat
and defense today.
Active soldiers: 1,400,000
Annual budget: US$ 740.5 billion
Air Force: 13,233
Armored fighting vehicles: 40,000
Navy fleet forces: 490
2. Russia
Russia currently has the second most powerful military force in the world. Formed in
1992, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian army was one of those that
invested the most in military strength in recent decades. Russia is also one of the few
countries that produce its own military equipment, having the largest number of tanks and
rocket projectors among all the armies in the world.
Active soldiers: 1,014,000
Annual budget: US$ 42.1 billion
Air Force: 4,144
Armored fighting vehicles: 27,100
Navy fleet forces: 603
3. China
China has the largest army in the world in terms of active soldiers. It is not surprising
because is the most populous country in the world. The country is also the second most
heavily funded in the armed forces, behind only the United States. The great development
of China in recent years has led experts to project that the Chinese army will become even
stronger in the coming decades.
Active soldiers: 2,185,000
Annual budget: US$ 178.2 billion
Air Force: 3,260
Armored fighting vehicles: 35,000
Navy fleet forces: 777
A country's military power is sustained by its economic power. Of the three great powers,
the United States and China have military power sustained by the economic power of
their economies, in contrast to Russia that has been weakened by the end of the Soviet
Union. By inheriting the military power of the former Soviet Union, Russia, even
economically weakened, is able to sustain its military power. The article entitled “Maiores
economias do mundo: 10 potências econômicas atuais” (Biggest economies in the world:
10 current economic powers), published on March 2, 2021 on the website
<https://www.maioresemelhores.com/maiores-economias-do-mundo/> informs that the
two main powers current economic are the United States and China.
1. United States
GDP: US$ 21.4 trillion

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Responsible for around 24% of the world GDP, the United States is the largest importer
and the third largest exporter of products in the world. Major global brands originate in
the country, such as Coca-Cola, Nike and McDonald’s. It is the main producer of electric
and nuclear energy, but also the largest importer of oil. Despite being the largest producer
of corn and soybeans, agriculture represents less than 1% of GDP. Most of the GDP is
made up of services: around 67.8%.
2. China
GDP: US 14.3 trillion
It is the country with the highest economic growth in the world. China shows an average
increase of 10% of GDP annually. It is composed of a mixed economy resulting from the
economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping applied since 1978. Farms were privatized, ending
the practice of collective agriculture. Industries in the area of mining and basic products
(clothing, food processing, etc.) also became part of the private sector. These measures
have led China to become the nation with the greatest economic growth in the last 25
years.
In the contemporary era, international geopolitical chess points to the existence of 3 major
players: the United States, China and Russia. From the confrontation that is established
in the future between these 3 great military powers, alternative scenarios may result to
the current one, which is characterized at the moment by the decline of the United States'
hegemony on the world stage. Based on the 3 great protagonists of contemporary
international geopolitical chess, it can be said that the United States aims to recover its
global hegemony in the economic and military planes. To achieve this objective, the
strategies of the American government basically consist of the following: 1) to stop the
rise of China as the future hegemonic power of the planet; and, 2) to prevent Russia from
rising to the status of a great world power. In practice, the United States government
wants to avoid confronting with two giants in the future: China as a hegemonic power
and invigorated Russia.
To stop the rise of China as a hegemonic power on the planet, the American military
strategy is centered on the Asia-Pacific region, without neglecting the Middle East to fight
terrorism, defend Israel, safeguard its oil interests and face the threat from Iran. As an ally
of the United States, Japan collaborates with China's North American "siege" strategy by
strengthening its military power until 2020 [See the article Japão reforça estratégia militar
para reagir à China (Japan reinforces military strategy to react to China) published on the
website <http://www.portugues.rfi.fr/geral/20101217-japao-reforca-estrategia-militar-
para-reagir-china>]. Another objective of the American military strategy is also to
pressure Russia's alliance with China by developing NATO actions in Europe and by
strengthening its military bases in Japan, South Korea and Diego Garcia and the Pacific
Fleet [FAGET, Ruiz Pereyra, Nueva estrategia militar global de Estados Unidos (New
United States Global Military Strategy) Published on <http://port.pravda.ru/mundo/11-
01-2012/32735-estrategia_eua-0/>].
In its military strategy, China considers the concept of active defense, which defeats the
enemy with offensive operations. The Armed Forces are dissuasive, prepared to prevent
the enemy's preventive attack, trained to counterattack, preventing the second attack. If

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there is a way to summarize its strategy, it can be said that China is not ready to start a
war. It will not be the first country to launch its nuclear missiles, but, when hit by the first,
it will not let the enemy launch the second. The Armed Forces are also shaped to deal
with non-traditional security threats, participate in the fight against terrorism, rescue in
disasters, humanitarian assistance, reconstruction in the face of calamities, in addition to
protecting the population. Despite claiming that it has no alliances, it has military
cooperation agreements with numerous countries, especially with Russia. It is worth
highlighting his attention to his new project, the “Silk Road”, especially the maritime
part, motivating the modernization of his maritime fleet and building support bases, as in
Djibouti, reported as a logistics center. China's military strategy can be compared,
allegorically, with the Great Wall, a static situation, showing a defensive attitude,
awaiting the attack.
Russia's military strategy provides for the rearmament of the Army and Navy with the
use of conventional and nuclear weapons in response to an attack against the country
[QUADROS, Bruno Et ali. A nova doutrina militar da Rússia: mais do mesmo? (Russia's
new military doctrine: more of the same?). Published on the website
<http://www.enciclopedia.com.pt/news.php?readmore=181>). NATO's expansion
towards Russian borders is the main external danger to the country. Russia would tend to
support China in a conflict with the United States. Regarding Russia, it is important to
highlight that its strategic objectives are: 1) to defend itself against the threat to its
territory represented by the United States and NATO forces; 2) reinforce its position as a
supplier of natural gas to the countries of the European Union; and, 3) achieve the status
of a world power lost with the end of the Soviet Union.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), signed in 1968, which legitimized the
possession of nuclear weapons by the United States, the Soviet Union, England, France
and China, tried to prevent other nations from developing them, restricting their access to
technology. Despite the NPT, today, in addition to the United States, Russia, China, the
United Kingdom and France, nuclear weapons hold India, North Korea, Pakistan and
Israel. Israel does not confirm or deny the reports of experts who accuse it of having a
large nuclear arsenal estimated at more than 100 warheads, making it the only country
with such weapons in the Middle East. In turn, Iran and Syria are accused of having secret
nuclear weapons programs. To date, 187 countries have ratified the NPT and none of
them have withdrawn from the pact, except North Korea, which did so in 2003. Several
countries have criticized the perpetual nuclear monopoly that the treaty imposes because
it legitimizes existing weapons and it does not admit that other countries have them.
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 espionage or sabotage against
a country's strategic or tactical structures. 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 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

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comes down to "doing something" as opposed to espionage, which comes down to
"discovering something".
In cyber warfare, state-supported hackers, whether members of a country's military
forces, or funded by that country, attack computers and networks of opposing countries
that affect resources needed for the war. They do this in the same way as on any other
computer or system, that is, they study the system deeply, discover its flaws and use those
flaws to control that system or destroy it.
Hackers can use confidential information intended for others (espionage) to gain the
upper hand in the battle against their opponent. They can find out the speed of a missile
and build another missile or an airplane that can overtake it. They can find out where the
enemy is moving their troops and plan an ambush like it did against Iranian general
Soleimani who was assassinated by the United States Army on January 3, 2020 in a
bombing raid at Baghdad airport.
Hackers can find out which scientists are important in creating weapons and attack them
directly as happened with the murder on 11/27/2020 of the Iranian scientist Mohsen
Fakhrizadeh assigned to Israel according to information released by the American CNN.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was Iran's leading nuclear scientist when he was shot by bullets on
a highway near Tehran.
When the country has control of these systems, it is also possible to sabotage people and
structures. Upon discovering how the troops are communicating, the country gains access
to the network so that it can confuse the enemy and invade their base. It could break into
your systems / accounts and defraud them by posing as one of them. Or it could use that
information to track them and blackmail people because of something found on the
computer or to hijack their families using private information.
Destroying the systems of enemy countries has an obvious result: it destroys what controls
that system, and, consequently, prevents it from functioning. A common example of
cyberguerrilla is the use of attacks to disable government websites and social networks.
This tactic was used effectively by the Russians during the 2008 South Ossetian War,
causing chaos and spreading false information to the population before and during the
Russian invasion.
Cyber warfare targets any sector important to the enemy's infrastructure. This means
sectors such as the army, national defense and the military industry. However, these
targets can also be weapons factories, mines and other manufactures that assist in the
operation of these factories and the electrical system, which supplies power to all of these
sectors.
In its most frightening version, cyber warfare can target the most important strategic
resource in a country that is its population. A hacker could make a terrorist attack to
destabilize or demotivate a population to fight. This implies triggering a financial war
with attacks on the financial sectors, which would cause economic damage or attacks on
communication systems to disable the telephone network and the Internet.
Cyber war makes no distinction between civilian and military targets. Although a missile
does far more damage than a virus, a cyber attack can result in civilian losses and deaths.

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If there was an attack on the energy system of any country and the system was destroyed
by a cyber attack, it would not be only the weapons factories that would stop working.
Such an attack would also result in traffic accidents, interrupted surgeries, failures in life
support machines when a large number of people could die.
It is very difficult to discover the author of a cyber attack or the governments that finance
these attacks. One aspect that makes digital weapons worse than nuclear weapons is
finding out who made the attack. It is very easy to hide the origin of such an attack by
masking the identification of the perpetrator of the attacks. Even if the government finds
out from which computer the attack was carried out, there is still a difficulty in finding
out who the person behind the screen was and it is even more difficult to know whether
or not he was a government official.
Clausewitz said that war is an act of violence to impose the will of a belligerent on his
enemy. Chinese Sun Tzu adds that "the greatest military feat is to win without fighting":
cunning and manipulation have more advantages than aggressiveness to impose your will
on others. Cyber war, defined by the use of means to control countries or companies,
radically transforms the three historical components of war: espionage, sabotage and
information war, in the line observed by Sun Tzu.
There is no doubt about the use of cyber capability in order to gain political, economic
and military advantage. According to reports, on the one hand, China, Russia, Iran and
North Korea and, on the other, the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom and France
have increasingly sophisticated means of obtaining information from governments and
companies to influence life of people and destroy the infrastructure and strategic
objectives of their opponents.
The world entered a phase of permanent war: without a battle front and without rules of
engagement. Cyber war resembles insurrectional war, with the difference of being able
to plan and execute action at a distance, away from the enemy. The use of artificial
intelligence algorithms will multiply the impact of actions and create new vulnerabilities
in the opponent. It will be more difficult to identify its authors, by using robots to
authorize the dissemination of false information on social networks or by making it
available with free access to algorithms allowing people to be included in any video and
to put in their mouth what they want it to be say. It is possible that cyber espionage,
sabotage or influence operations are already being carried out in a completely
autonomous manner, requiring only the green light from someone.
The understanding that 5G technology can be exploited for espionage and sabotage of
infrastructure facilities, communication networks and financial centers has become a new
concern and is at the root of the ban on buying Chinese Huawei products for public or
private 5G networks in the United States. The new cold war between the United States
and China began with trade, but it is likely to move quickly to technology, where China
is showing itself to be ahead of the United States in advancing the application of the latest
generation 5G.
Everything that has just been reported makes it quite evident that science and technology
are at the service of not only human emancipation, but also at the service of war and the
destruction of humanity. In fact, science and technology came to be used for good and for
evil. The expectation that science and technology would be used exclusively for the
progress of humanity was painfully interrupted by events that marked today's society, the
main ones being undoubtedly the catastrophes of the 1st and 2nd World War. In fact,

9. 9
science contributed to the barbarism of two world wars with the invention of powerful
and destructive weapons and continues to contribute to the sophistication of modern
warfare.
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 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 power 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 fallen almost continuously, reaching 46% in
2016. A rational attitude in the contemporary era would be to drastically reduce military
expenditures in Brazil to allocate part of these resources destined to the maintenance of
the armed forces for another more productive purpose, namely to participate in the fight
against terrorism, in the rescue and relief in the case of disasters, in humanitarian
assistance as in combating the pandemic of the new Coronavirus and reconstruction in
the face of calamities. In turn, Brazil's foreign policy should be centered on the struggle
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.
In addition to the military spending in Brazil being unproductive due to the inability of
the armed forces to deter any external threat, the resources used have a bad destination
because they are applied in about 80% with personnel and not in the development of
military technology. Another absurdity that is happening in the Bolsonaro government
lies in the fact that the 2021 Budget proposal allocates a considerable share of the increase
in expenses to the Armed Forces at the expense of Education and Health expenses. Other
ministries were passed over in relation to the Armed Forces as Environment (decrease of
4.7%), Agriculture (reduction of 1.7%) and Regional Development (6% less). The

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Science and Technology portfolio, on the other hand, had a big reduction in its budget
proposal (drop of 25%) [See the article by Mariana Schreiber under the title “Os gastos
bilionários que Bolsonaro propõe para a Defesa e que levarão a cortes em outras áreas em
2021” (The billionaire expenditures that Bolsonaro proposes for Defense and that will
lead to cuts in other areas in 2021) published on August 31, 2020 on the website
<https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-53969636>).
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 warfare, a condition that is difficult 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 does
not make sense for the country to assume extremely high expenditures to maintain
unproductive armed forces like that of Brazil, incapable of deterring external threats. The
rational attitude would be for the Brazilian government to drastically reduce military
spending 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 (hat have not had them since 1868), Samoa Islands, Dominica, Tuvalu,
Vatican City and Grenada.
* 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).