Coral Bell Quotes
Mere population size has been no indicator of economic or military clout.
Coral Bell, Australian Political Scientist, The Twilight of the Unipolar World, The American Interest, Winter 2005
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This view that the more people a country has, the richer it is, has gone hand in hand with the notion that a large population will assure a nation of extensive military prowess. However, both of these are now known to be false. The most heavily populated nations are among the poorest, and military prowess is more a function of the training of troops and the modern tools and weapons. Tiny Israel has demonstrated that many times since its origin. It has been attacked over and over by several nations at a time. Despite the fact that Israel was vastly outnumbered by enemy troops and weapons like tanks and planes, Israel has repeatedly demolished the more populous enemies. The world, observing this, no longer emphasizes trying to build a large manpower pool as it does not help militarily and it makes full employment very difficult.
For hundreds of years most people of the world believed this. In the latter half of the 20th century, however, a very small nation, Israel, not only defended itself against nations many times their size but did so against the attacks of all of them together. The Israelis became so powerful that many in the world began to rethink the Gervaise principle and placed more value on the educational and technological competence of a nation. Modern technology eliminated the criticality of population size.
Actually, many politicians and scholars disagree that population size heavily correlates with national influence in these areas. A good example would be Israel. It’s population is much smaller than the Arabs surrounding them. Yet their military is far superior; it’s economy is stronger and it is politically more influential that any of its Arab neighbors. The United States is smaller than Russia, India, and China; yet it is much more influential. Too large a population makes it harder to educate the citizens and costs the country much in terms of industry and military manpower.
