《全球火力报告》回顾显示，美国在军事实力上继续领先世界，而俄罗斯和中国比以往任何时候都落后——这种力量动态在过去10年一直波动，随着2020年的临近，可能会在新兴技术和新政治现实中继续存在。
今年5月发布的2019年榜单显示了一个熟悉的顶级聚会——依次是美国、俄罗斯和中国。十年前，美国稳稳地位列42个国家之首，但2009年晚些时候，中国勉强位居第二。两年后，俄罗斯在接下来的版本中重新获得了这个位置，并一直保持至今。
最新报告发现，“美国的主要国防竞争来自俄罗斯和中国，给美国带来巨大的支出、现代化和发展压力”。
不存在单一的、经过认证的武装力量等级，世界各国在军事力量方面如何进行相互比较，是学者和普通公民争论不休的话题。2006年发布的《全球火力》使用包括规模、经济和技术在内的55个数据点的“内部公式”更新年度指数，但不包括核武器。它现在覆盖137个国家，是这些统计数据最广泛的来源之一。
计算所谓“权力指数”的方法多年来一直在演变，但迄今已变得清晰的是，这三个主要大国特别致力于增强武装力量，莫斯科和北京都已开始努力大幅缩小与华盛顿的差距。
6月11日，北马其顿克里沃拉克训练支援中心，第56史赛克旅战斗队第111步兵团第1营阿尔法连的美国士兵在2019年决定性打击演习中进行夜间实弹演习。这个巴尔干小国是北约的最新成员，使西方军事联盟达到29个成员国。
该指数认为0是一个完美的分数，美国今年的排名为0.0615。俄罗斯以0.0639的优势超过了一度的数百个百分点，现在仅落后美国几十个百分点。
“尽管受到制裁和货币疲软，国防现代化仍在继续——当地工业在重整军备方面发挥了重要作用，”报告称。
中国，0673点，离竞争对手不远。该报告的作者写道:“第二艘服役的航空母舰正在为日益壮大的中国水面和海底舰队而努力——与已经强大的陆军和空军并肩作战。”。
除此之外，印度的军事力量在过去十年的全球火力报告中占据了第四位。这些年来，以下职位频繁变动，2009年，联合王国、法国、德国、巴西、日本和土耳其分别占据第五至第十位。
今年，这些地方看起来是这样的:法国、日本、韩国、英国、土耳其和德国。其他国家的武装力量经常占据美国头条，这些国家的显著趋势包括朝鲜上升2个百分点至第18位，伊朗上升4个百分点至第14位，仅次于巴基斯坦，巴基斯坦与10年前保持不变。
事实证明，中东是一个特别动荡的地区，因为十年的内战、冲突和动荡重新定义了该地区的权力动态。叙利亚、伊拉克和利比亚分别从第34、37和39位下降到第50、53和77位。根据137个国家的最新报告，以色列从第11位下降到第17位，黎巴嫩紧随其后，从2009年的第42位下降到第118位。
现在排在最后的是小小的喜马拉雅王国不丹，它刚刚在星期二庆祝了它的第112个国庆节。尽管该国在火力方面并不引以为豪，但其战略位置已使其成为中国和印度这两个顶级军事邻国之间领土争端的爆发点。中印两国已经卷入了与巴基斯坦长达数十年的口水战，最近还从俄罗斯购买了先进武器。
这些复杂、重叠的亚洲冲突发生之际，莫斯科和北京看到，面对华盛顿孤立这两个东方大国的努力，它们的利益日益一致。然而，随着俄罗斯和中国寻求与地区强国建立桥梁，它们的意图在西方越来越受到质疑，美国领导的北约联盟在西方寻求21世纪的战略在处理两者时。
2018年9月13日，东方2018(东方2018)军事演习结束时，中国军队在西伯利亚的楚戈训练场举行阅兵式。在接下来的几个月里，俄罗斯和北约去年举行了被认为是冷战以来规模最大的联合演习。
这些趋势在21世纪20年代将如何发展仍然很难预测，但最近的事态发展，如《中程核力量条约》的崩溃，可能会发挥重要作用。自1987年以来，这项历史性的军备控制协议禁止华盛顿和莫斯科部署310至3420英里的陆基导弹，但唐纳德·特朗普总统的政府在8月份撤出，并在此后几个月里已经试验了两枚这种武器。
莫斯科驳斥了关于其违反自己新武器系统协议的指控，并试图说服美国官员开始谈判围绕另一项不扩散协定，即《新削减战略武器条约》。如果这一协议在2021年2月到期，俄罗斯和美国将自1972年以来首次没有限制或检查彼此核武库的相互措施。
与此同时，新的和更先进的运载此类大规模毁灭性武器的平台已经开始进入战场。五角大楼发言人空军中校·罗伯特·卡弗讲述新闻周刊上个月俄罗斯和中国发展超音速导弹的速度超过了现有的防御系统，“造成了一种我们必须解决的作战不对称”，这一努力现在被认为是美国军方“最高的技术研究和工程优先权”
美国拥有无与伦比的国防预算、众多盟友和世界上其他国家加在一起的航空母舰，因此美国不太可能很快失去其主导军事力量，但在另一个至关重要的类别上，它可能正在下滑。在发布显示北京在亚洲主要经济和政治领域击败华盛顿的实力指数数月后，洛伊研究所上月发布了一份新报告，发现中国已经超越美国，成为全球最大的外交强国。
HOW TOP POWERS U.S., RUSSIA, CHINA COMPARE WITH OTHER MILITARIES ACROSS THE GLOBE DURING THE PAST DECADE
The United States continues to lead the world in its military might with Russia and China closer behind than ever—a power dynamic that has fluctuated the past 10 years and may continue amid emerging technologies and new political realities as 2020 approaches, a review of Global Firepower reports shows.
Its 2019 list, released in May, shows a familiar gathering at the top—the United States, Russia and China, in that order. Ten years ago, the U.S. firmly led the list of 42 countries, but it was China then that narrowly clinched second later in 2009. Russia regained this spot in the following edition two years later and has remained there ever since.
"Major American defense competition comes from Russia and China, putting the United States under immense pressure to spend, modernize, and evolve," the latest report found.
No single, certified ranking of armed forces exists, and how the nations of the world compare to one another in terms of military strength is a subject of much debate among scholars and everyday citizens alike. Global Firepower, launched in 2006, updates its annual index using an "in-house formula" of 55 data points including size, economy and technology—but not nuclear weapons. It now covers 137 countries and is one of the most widely-proliferated sources for these statistics.
The methods of calculating the so-called "power index" have evolved over the years, but what's become clear through the date is that the three leading powers have been especially committed to enhancing their armed forces and both Moscow and Beijing have begun work toward considerably closing the gap with Washington.
U.S. soldiers from Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 111th Infantry, 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team conduct a night live-fire iteration during Exercise Decisive Strike 2019 at the Training Support Center in Krivolak, North Macedonia, June 11. The tiny Balkan nation is NATO's newest member, bringing the Western military alliance to a total of 29 member states.
The index considers 0 to be a perfect score and the U.S. earned a .0615 in this year's ranking. Overcoming a margin of what was once hundreds of points, Russia with .0639 now lagged behind the U.S. by only a couple dozen points.
"Defense modernization continues despite sanctions and a weakened currency - local industry has been instrumental in rearmament," the report said.
China, at .0673, was not too far away from its competitors. "A second commissioned aircraft carrier is in the works for a growing Chinese surface and undersea fleet - to go along with an already powerful land and air force," the report's authors wrote.
Further than down the line was India, whose military has secured its spot at fourth place in every single Global Firepower report in the past decade. The following positions have shifted frequently throughout the years, with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Brazil, Japan and Turkey occupying fifth through tenth places, respectively, in 2009.
This year, those spots looked like this: France, Japan, South Korea, the U.K., Turkey and Germany. Notable trends involving other countries whose armed forces often dominate U.S. headlines included North Korea's rise two points to 18th and Iran's jump four spots to 14th, putting it just ahead of Pakistan, which remained the same as it did 10 years ago.
The Middle East proved to be a particularly volatile region as ten years of civil war, conflict and unrestredefined the region's power dynamics. Syria, Iraq and Libya fell from 34th, 37th and 39th to 50th, 53rd and 77th, respectively. Israel dropped from 11th to 17th and Lebanon hugged the bottom of the list, falling from the then-last place of 42nd in 2009 to 118th in the latest report of 137 states.
In last place now is the tiny, Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, which just celebrated its 112th national day Tuesday. Although the country boasts little in the way of firepower, its strategic location has made it a flashpoint in a territorial dispute between top-military-tier neighbors China and India, which was already embroiled in a decades-long spat with Pakistan and recently bought advanced weapons from Russia.
These complex, overlapping conflicts across Asia came as Moscow and Beijing saw their interests increasingly aligned in the face of Washington's efforts to isolate the two Eastern powers. As Russia and China sought to build bridges with regional powers, however, their intentions have increasingly been called into question in the West, where the U.S-led NATO alliance has sought a 21st-century strategy in dealing with both.
Chinese troops parade at the end of the day of the Vostok-2018 (East-2018) military drills held jointly among Russia, China and Mongolia at Tsugol training ground in Siberia, on September 13, 2018. Within months of one another, Russia and NATO held joint drills last year considered to be their largest since the Cold War.
How these trends would play out through the 2020s remained difficult to predict, but recent developments such as the collapse of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty may play a major role. Since 1987, the historic arms control deal banned Washington and Moscow from fielding land-based missiles ranging from 310 to 3,420 miles but President Donald Trump's administration pulled out in August and has already tested two such weapons in the months since.
Moscow has refuted accusations that it had violated the deal with a new weapons system of its own and has tried to convince U.S. officials to begin negotiations surrounding another non-proliferation agreement, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). Should this be left to expire in February 2021, Russia and the U.S. will be left with virtually no mutual measures for restricting or inspecting one another's nuclear arsenals for the first time since 1972.
At the same time, new and more advanced platforms for delivering such weapons of mass destruction have already begun to enter the battlefield. Pentagon spokesperson Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Robert Carver told Newsweek last month that Russia and China's development of hypersonic missiles capable of outpacing existing defense systems "has created a warfighting asymmetry that we must address," an effort now considered to be the U.S. military's "highest technical research and engineering priority."
With an unmatched defense budget defense, numerous allies and as many aircraft carriers as the rest of the world combined, it was unlikely the U.S. would lose its lead military anytime soon, but it may be slipping in another vital category. Months after releasing a power index that showed Beijing beating Washington in key economic and political categories in Asia, the Lowy Institute published a new report last month finding China had surpassed the U.S. as the world's top diplomatic power across the globe.
