A question of size.

Small size generally means large vulnerability. The perception of threat is broader and often more immediate for small countries. The feeling of comparative weakness, of exposure to risk, and of potential intimidation by larger powers often permeates the security perspectives of small states. Some even exhibit “garrison state” approaches to national security, including adoption of policies of preemption. Israel is the salient case of recent times, but in this sample Chile has a history of garrison state outlooks due to its narrow land mass and extensive land and sea borders (leading to a lack of strategic “depth”). Irrespective of the specific response, such concerns about relative weakness and vulnerability translate into a pressing need to accurately read evolving threat scenarios, changing geopolitical contexts and strategic circumstances. 

This is true regardless of physical location. As World War Two demonstrated, advances in military technology allow for global force projection by large military powers, something that even island states like New Zealand have experienced first hand. Thus, regardless of the lengths to which they are compelled to go in order to defend themselves, small countries often believe that they must be more vigilant than large countries against a variety of potential threats both near and afar. For example, domestic instability in Indonesia, the Solomon Islands or Papua New Guinea may hold relatively little concern to the United States, China or Russia beyond a potentially adverse impact on economic interests and the possibility of local proxies dragging them into direct conflict. The growing Chinese submarine presence shadowing its blue water fishing fleet in the South Pacific is of relatively low concern to European and African powers. But for New Zealand, instability in the Melanesian archipelago and Southwest Pacific or militarisation of the Antarctic constitute more immediate threats. That can either be by drawing New Zealand into direct military intervention, or from ethnic conflicts in the Solomons or New Guinea spilling over onto other island states in the Western Pacific and/or expatriate communities located throughout the region. For its part, the Chinese naval presence in the Southwest Pacific is seen as an emerging threat to important sea lanes of communication between East/Southeast Asia and the Antipodes. This has become a major concern for New Zealand as well as its larger security partners.

For its part, Chile has more to be concerned about Peruvian maritime territorial ambitions (and vice versa) than Brazil does with Peruvian land encroachment, while Portugal has more to fear from unchecked North African mass migration and the potential for backlash produced by its involvement in NATO deployments than does a similarly sized country like Austria. On the other hand many small nations do not exhibit undue preoccupation with external threats, either because they are seen to not exist, or more often, precisely because they are included in security alliances such as NATO. But that is exactly why they join: if they felt secure they would not feel the need to align with such umbrella organizations, or to seek the bi-lateral protection of larger defense patrons. To the contrary, the starting point for most small states is a quest for security that they find impossible to achieve on their own.  How they do so is secondary to the imperative that they do so. 

The issue, again, is a matter of size. Beyond the elements of discipline, motivation and will, a nation’s ability to defend itself, much less wage war, is determined by the size of its resource base. Size is physical, economic and human. Advantages in size translate into military strength, be it via economies of scale (production of basic military base materials such as iron and oil), population (ability to muster troops), or geography (that is, the concept of strategic depth (land mass and terrain under arms), the larger of which makes for difficult conquest by external aggressors (unless they adopt piecemeal warfare approaches such as those being employed by Russia in the Ukraine, which are susceptible to marshalling-of-force defensive strategies). Needless to say, the ability to translate resource advantages into war-fighting capability passes through a raft of other intervening variables such as political legitimacy, ideological motivation, technological sophistication and the like. But all things being equal, size confers military advantage. For those lacking in human and natural resource bases, sources of comparative advantage, or economies of scale and population numbers upon which to draw on, policies of complete self-defense are impossible. For them, neutrality, subordination or alliance are the strategic options. 

To be sure, the value of well-trained citizen militias like those of Switzerland in deterring aggressors by raising the costs of invasion cannot be discounted. When strategically organized into a prolonged armed resistance employing guerrilla (irregular, non-conventional) tactics, small states may even stand a respectable chance of prevailing in an asymmetric war of attrition against larger adversaries whose vital interests are not at stake and who choose not to wage wars of annihilation. Vietnam is a case in point, and Cuban defense strategy is premised on such a scenario (although the origins of the Stalinist regimes in both countries brought with it the help of larger military patrons, which, if lessened now, guaranteed their initial survival and consolidation). But for most small countries, foreign military assistance and mutual defense agreements are the most sought after key to national security.This makes small states, and their military planners, especially conscious of changes in the geostrategic environments in which they operate. 

Dependent as they are on their connections with larger powers, on the specific nature of these relations, on their internal political dynamics and on the ongoing relations between the larger powers themselves, security practitioners in small democracies must be able to respond quickly to changing geopolitical events and shifting strategic doctrines. This may not always be in accordance with the perspectives of civilian political elites or the public at large, who do not necessarily perceive security issues in a manner akin to those directly responsible for national defense. In fact, quite the contrary often occurs.

Absent dire, immediate and compelling threats to national sovereignty or physical integrity, the public in many small democracies see spending on external defense as a luxury that comes at the expense of other core areas of state endeavour such as health, education and welfare. The public perception often is that being small and insignificant on the world strategic stage means that these countries do not attract the unwanted attention of larger states, and when they do attract such attention, they can rely on others for protection.  Conversely, political and military elites in small democracies are more cognizent of the fact that it is the commitment of military forces to external security roles, be they multilateral or bilateral in nature, along with or beyond cultural-diplomatic or economic and trade ties, that secure them the protection of larger patrons.

Because of this difference in perspective, spending on external defense often translates into a losing election proposition for democratic governments in small countries. This is due to the fact that domestic policy areas (including domestic anti-crime efforts) are more vital than military security when it comes to the reproduction of the contingent mass consent that is the foundational stone of democratic regimes. In any political system based upon competitive elections and contingent mass consent, foreign military commitments are particularly susceptible to the vagaries of public opinion, especially in times of peace. In small democracies the issue is particularly acute given the limited resource base available, which means that military involvement in foreign theaters requires universally compelling rationales that transcend patriotic impulses exploitable–one way or the other–during electoral cycles. In most cases the comfort of a larger security umbrella is the preferred option, with unilateral external force projection being the exception to the norm. 

The was evident in Portugal in the 1980s and 1990s, where the slow process of post-authoritarian military reform towards new external missions was not so much due to ingrained corporate attitudes and bureaucratic entrenchment within the armed forces that favored continuation of internal security roles. Rather, it was more a product of two internal factors: inter-service rivalries over the strategic orientation to be adopted, and competing government priorities. The latter were driven by public concerns with domestic issues rather than military projection in the absence of immediate threats, especially given the “insurance policy” provided by Portuguese membership in NATO. (Vasconcelos, 1986; 1988). The former were driven by conflicts within the armed forces about which service branch should be given leadership priority and corresponding resources given the new strategic posture. The Army? The Navy? The Air Force? How should they be organised and how much should each be funded? That was at the core of the inter-service disagreements over future force composition and projection.

But are small democracies any more vulnerable or their concerns with military preparedness and projection any different than those of other small countries with non-democratic forms of rule?  The answer is yes, and the issue is one of internal politics rather than external threat realities. Small authoritarian regimes may at times divert scarce societal resources to external defense operations because domestic mass consent is not sought or put to legitimate tests of accountability. What this means is that unlike small democracies, which must make the case for external military involvement in a way that passes successfully through the filter of popular consent, small authoritarian regimes simply do not have to do so. The colonial defense strategies of authoritarian Portugal are emblematic in this regard, and Chile’s territorial sabre rattling against Argentina and Peru under the Pinochet dictatorship was a manipulation of rather than a response to genuine threats or nationalistic sentiment on the part of the Chilean population. The fore-mentioned cases of Cuba and Vietnam, however “popular” they claim to be, are further examples of small authoritarian regimes unconstrained by the filter of freely given consent. Moreover, under all authoritarian regimes, big or small, the military-security apparatuses are primarily used for internal control, with the difference between inclusionary and exclusionary dictatorships being read by their management of political opposition, ideological mobilization capabilities, control of productive investment and labor market conditioners. In all cases, public expenditures on security in small authoritarian regimes far outstrip those seen under small democratic regimes, and their capabilities of control of the domestic population often exceed even those of larger authoritarian brethren (e.g. Singapore versus Myanmar).

NEXT: The notion of geopolitical periphery.