[lit-ideas] Re: France, a Rogue State in 1801-05

  • From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 11:49:52 +0900

On 8/14/06, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Kagan has taught at West Point, is considered a distinguished military
historian


Agreed. So we should take his views seriously. That does not mean,
however, that we take them at face value.


Further, not having read the book, I rely on Bill Kristol's description of 
it,

"an integrated study of Napoleon's political diplomatic and military
strategy, an educated history of the Napoleonic Era and educated
diplomatic political and military history."

I note the absence in this description of any mention of population, a
critical factor when military/intelligence analysts move from
speculation about a potential enemy's intentions to the far more
hard-nosed business of assessing capabilities.

For the sake of argument, let us assume that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
shares not only Napoleon's megalomania but also his military genius.
What does he have to work with?

Googling leads me to two useful sources.

For the population of Europe in 1810:
http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/abstract/population/population/world/c_world2.html

For the the population of the world in
2006-7:http://www.geohive.com/earth/pop_top50.aspx

From the first, I obtain the following statistics:

France  38,000,000
Russia  31,400,000
Austria 19,000,000
Great Britain   12,000,000
Spain   10,000,000
Ottoman Empire: Europe  8,000,000
Italy   6,400,000
Naples  6,000,000
Saxony  5,600,000
Prussia 5,000,000
Poland  4,500,000
Bavaria 3,231,573
Denmark 2,400,000
Portugal        2,000,000
Sweden  2,000,000
Switzerland     2,000,000
Westphalia      1,900,000
Holland 1,880,000

These show that, at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, France had the
largest national population in Europe, a population larger than the
combined populations of Austria, Great Britain and Prussia.

From the second source, I obtain the following statistics:

China   1,313,973,713
India   1,095,351,995
United States of America        298,444,215
Indonesia       245,452,739
Brazil  188,078,227
Pakistan        165,803,560
Bangladesh      147,365,352
Russia  142,893,540
Nigeria 131,859,731
Japan   127,463,611
Mexico  107,449,525
Philippines     89,468,677
Vietnam 84,402,966
Germany 82,422,299
Egypt   78,887,007
Ethiopia        74,777,981
Turkey  70,413,958
Iran    68,688,433

Where France was No. 1 in population in 1810, Iran ranks No. 18 in
population in 2006. In 1810, Great Britain faced in France, an enemy
with a population more than three times its own. In 2006, the United
States faces in Iran an enemy with a population less than a third of
its own.

To this we may add, of course, that in 1810, France and its European
enemies were on a par when it came to military technology. Musket,
bayonet and muzzle-loading cannon were pretty much all that anyone
could muster. If we consider industrial base, defense spending, and
advanced military technology, the imbalance between the US and Iran is
far more lopsided than population alone would suggest.

This does not imply that Iran poses no danger. In an era of
asymmetrical warfare and weapons of mass destruction, even a small
nation with forces that see dying for their cause as glorious can do
grievous harm to a larger and better equipped antagonist. It does,
however, suggest that leaping to the conclusion that if  Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad is a Napoleon wannabe, he poses the same level of threat
to us that Napoleon posed to his enemies, the argument has become
far-fetched, as arguments based solely on speculations about
intentions often tend to be when capabilities are considered.


--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN

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