In Geopolitics Today - Wednesday, September 15th
Large NATO Military Exercise to Take Place Around the Scottish Coast and Quantifying Power Between Nations: Gross vs Net
Large NATO Military Exercise to Take Place Around the Scottish Coast
Faslane is a bay near the village of Garelochhead in Scotland which today forms the main part of the UK’s Naval Base Clyde. Over the coming weeks, the base is set to host military units from Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the United States, as they together embark on the largest military exercise in Europe until the end of the month. These ten NATO nations will join the hosts in taking part in Joint Warrior 212, which, together with Exercise Dynamic Mariner 21, seek to provide a maritime evaluation in preparation for NATO Response Force (NRF) 2022.
The exercises are expected to include up to 25 warships, three submarines, over 30 aircraft and about 6,750 personnel. On the agenda for Joint Warrior 212 and Exercise Dynamic Mariner 21 are mine-hunting and amphibious landing operations, with aerial cover provided by roughly 30 aircraft operating from RAF Lossiemouth and Prestwick Airport. A statement released by the UK Ministry of Defence outlined the scenario of the exercise will mirror “a broad range of crisis and conflict situations which could realistically be experienced in real-world operations.”
Faslane was initially chosen as location for a naval base during the Second World War, after which it become an instrumental element of British military strategy during the Cold War because of its geographic position. The naval base is located in a geographic space which forms a bastion on the navigable Gare Loch and Firth of Clyde on the west coast of Scotland. This position allows for fast and undetected access through the North Channel to the North Atlantic via the strategically significant GIUK gap. Today, the naval base at Faslane still houses the nuclear submarines which make up the UK’s entire nuclear deterrent.
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Quantifying Power Between Nations: Gross vs Net
The need to accurately estimate power remains a central element of international politics and statecraft. But as analysts measure and estimate the capabilities of international actors, many tend to evaluate countries’ power using broad indicators of economic and military resources, such as GDP or military spending. New research suggests that this way of tallying wealth and military assets without deducting for the costs of operating them is a flawed way of estimating power.
Closer analysis of historical rivalries reveals that this kind of ‘gross power’ approach is an inaccurate interpretation, and that instead, analysts ought to rely more on a ‘net power resources’ approach for insights into the current geopolitical balance of power. A gross power assessment can lead one to believe that American unipolarity is enduring and that China and other nations would not rival American supremacy in the coming decades. But an analysis of net power resources indicates that China already harnesses significantly greater net power than the Soviet Union did in the 20th Century, and that if left unchecked could in time come to shorten the relative power disparity between the two.
Within this context of the US-China rivalry, net power assessments indicate that the United States will remain unsurpassed. A net power resources approach offers additional insight into trends of the global balance of power and in net power terms, the US faces a geopolitical challenge going forward. While China is unlikely to equal the United States according to net power evaluations, historical case-studies indicate that a nation can represent a threatening challenge to the hegemonic power even if between them there exists a large disparity in net power resources.
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