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152
The Poverty of Statistics
Military Power and Strategic Balance
Jan Ludvík
Military expenditures and the number of service personnel are the
two most common features used to compare national military power.
However, to what extent they reflect the real world remains a question.
This article aims to provide the answer by using data on the great power
conflicts in the last 160 years. The Correlates of War data are utilized to
highlight that the relation between pre-war military expenditures and
the numerical strength of armies on one hand and the outcome of the
war on the other is blurred to say the least. States with higher military
expenditures prevailed only in six great power conflicts out of nine.
Only four of them were won by the state with a numerically stronger
peacetime army. The case of the Franco-Prussian war is then used to
illustrate that not even superiority in both categories can safely prevent a
crushing defeat, still less ensure victory. A nation’s military power stems
from its ability to adapt effectively to the realities of modern warfare.
That is what neither the sheer number of soldiers, nor high military
expenditures can guarantee.
Keywords: strategic balance; military power; military expenditures; Fran-
co-Prussian war.
Introduction
The significance of studying shifts in the balance of military power
hardly needs explaining.1 The concept of balance lies at the very heart
of the realist tradition of international relations theory and changes
in the distribution of power are often seen as causes of systemic wars
between great powers.
2
The balance of military power is one of the most
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Jan Ludvík
important components of the overall balance of power, if not the most
important. Nonetheless, the critical issue how the balance should be
estimated remains to be solved. When powers are at war the balance is
visible on the battlefield. But peacetime estimates pose more challenging
issue. Elaborated models can be produces, and are occasionally utilized
by scholars and specialist.3 But most practitioners use much easier esti-
mates that are drawn from readily available data.
Arguably the most influential estimates are drawn from data on mil-
itary expenditures and the numerical strengths of armed forces, often
establishing guidelines for the policy. nato’s discourse that sets the
defence expenditures at two percent of nation’s gdp as the threshold
of nation’s responsible behaviour in the realm of defence and alliance
commitments stands as a prime example. The question is to what extent
we simplify reality by assuming (purely intuitively) that a state with a
larger army and military budget must be stronger than another with a
smaller military budget and a smaller army. The relation between stra-
tegic balance on one hand and military expenditure and troop numbers
on the other remains largely operationally undefined. This text aims
to fill this gap and offer a simple, rigorous operational definition of the
relation between strategic balance and military power as measured by
arms spending and number of military personnel.
The text proceeds as follows: the research strategy and data are first
introduced. Thereafter follows the results, which show that the relation
between military expenditures and number of military personnel on one
side and the outcome of a war on the other is far less intuitive than it
might seem. In its next section, the text therefore presents a brief case
study of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, whose analysis serves to
illustrate the critical flaws of the reductionist comparisons of military
balance.
Method and data
War is a highly visible and unequivocal comparison of military strength,
hard to contest. If we wish to stay within the Clausewitzian paradigm
of war as a utilitarian act that serves to achieve a political goal, we can
assume that the outcome of a war is the best dependent variable for
testing the measures of military power in the real world. The state with
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higher military expenditures and numerically preponderant army should
overpower its opponent, thus it must prove capable of achieving their
political aims also when it comes to a real war conflict.
The analysis presented here is based on the outcomes of great power
conflicts since 1850. For each of these conflicts, the author examines
the data on military expenditures and number of military personnel
of the great powers involved. The data are taken from the Correlates of
War database
4
. The choice of 1850 as the starting point in time is largely
arbitrary. The general aim was to use data from as many conflicts as
possible: however, the different nature of wars in the period before the
industrial revolution and the rise of nationalism could have affected the
validity of results. On the other hand, skewing the data set markedly
toward the present would radically reduce the number of cases that
could be studied and ultimately prevent the use of quantitative analysis
to illustrate the relation between the variables.
The key criterion a conflict must satisfy to be included in this anal-
ysis concerns the parties involved: it must be a conflict between great
powers. This criterion is based primarily on the concept of strategic
balance, which is concerned with the strongest countries of the world.
This is justifiable, since great powers have traditionally been the agents
of international relations, while small states often end up as mere objects
of these relations. In reality, small states often have negligible impact on
strategic balance. The analysis therefore includes only those conflicts
in which at least one contemporary great power was fighting on either
side. Conversely, conflicts in which a great power was involved only on
one side have been excluded, as these are often asymmetrical conflicts
that follow a different logic than great power conflicts.5 In line with the
Correlates of War methodology, war is defined as a conflict with more
than 1,000 battle-related deaths a year. The term “great power” is used
to denote the following countries: Russia (including the Soviet Union),
France and the United Kingdom for the entire period taken into account,
Germany (and Prussia) until 1945, Austria until 1918, Italy from 1859 till
1945, Japan from 1900 till 1945, the United States since the turn of the
century, the People’s Republic of China since 1949, India and Pakistan
since 1998. Another condition for including a great power in the data set
analysed is a significant participation of its forces in combat operations.
The period studied includes nine wars between great powers. The first
of these is the Crimean War of 1856 between Russia on one side and a
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The Poverty
of Statistics
coalition led by the United Kingdom and France on the other. Three
years later, France and Austria clashed in northern Italy. The struggle
for national unification of Germany and Italy produced two more con-
flicts: in 1866, Austria found itself at war with Prussia and Italy, and in
1870-1871 Prussia, aided by smaller German states, waged war against
France. The twentieth century ushered in the first Asian great power
and with it the Russo-Japanese War. This conflict is followed by the two
systemic world wars. The analysis further includes the Korean War as
a conflict between the us and the People’s Republic of China. The last
war between great powers as defined above is the 1999 conflict between
India and Pakistan in the Kargil area.
For each of these conflicts, two indexes are provided, indicating the
ratio of military expenditure of the victorious party to the expenditure of
the defeated party and a corresponding ratio between numbers of military
personnel on the two sides. The indexes are evaluated as follows: values
between 0.9 and 1.1 are considered as parity; values between 1.1 and 1.5
are classified as moderate preponderance of the victorious party/coali-
tion; the range between 1.5 and 2.0 denotes significant preponderance; a
value exceeding 2.0 is considered an overwhelming preponderance. On
the other hand, values between 0.75-0.9 denote moderate disadvantage;
0.5-0.75 significant disadvantage, and a value below 0.5 an overwhelming
disadvantage. Assumption that the preponderant state should win the
war is then tested against empirical reality and the correlation between
this hypothesis and reality is examined to determine whether it is strong
enough to indicate a causal relationship.
Two crucial steps that impact the selected data should be highlighted.
Firstly, the indexes only represent the troop or expenditure ratios between
the great powers involved. The role of small states is thus disregarded,
although it is taken into account in the (qualitative) explanation of
deviant cases. The second step was the decision to use data from the
year immediately preceding the conflict. In this case, the aim was to
establish to what extent the comparison of “peacetime data” is useful
in determining the balance of power.
Alliance changes make it rather dicult to analyse either of the world
wars. However, in both of them, the determining factor for assessing
the role of a state was whether – and on which side – the forces of that
state significantly participated in combat operations. For this reason,
the First World War is regarded as a conflict between Germany and
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Austria on one side and the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Italy and
the us on the other. Though Italy supported the Central Powers before
the war, it entered the war on the side of the Entente Powers. Russia
quit the war in 1917, but until then had borne a significant part of the
war fighting burden. Similarly, the us only entered the war in 1917, but
its share was also significant. In contrast, Japan is not included in the
aggregate data for the Entente, since its participation in the war effort
was negligible after its early occupation of the German Pacific colonies.
In the case of the Second World War, data for Germany, Italy and Japan
on one side are compared with the United Kingdom, France, Russia
and the us on the other. A late entry into war (Japan, the us, the Soviet
Union, to some extent also Italy) or an early exit due to defeat (France,
Italy) are neglected. It should be acknowledged that the choices made by
the author in the case of both world wars can definitely be questioned.
However, other imaginable choices should not alter the final outcomes
very strongly, since the research does not only focus on the correlation
between military expenditure/number of military personnel and the
outcome of the war, but also seeks to determine whether the relationship
is causal. This implies that even a single case that cannot be satisfactorily
explained within the framework of the model may suce to prove that
the above-mentioned variables are not linked by a causal relationship.
Results
A difference in pre-war military spending of the future warring states
(Table 1) can explain the outcome of six of the nine great power conflicts
in the last 160 years. In two cases (First World War and Kargil War) the
victorious party/coalition had an overwhelming advantage in terms of
pre-war military expenditure. A significant advantage in this field was
converted into victory in three cases (Crimean War, Second Italian War of
Independence, Austro-Prussian War). In one case (Russo-Japanese War),
the victorious state had moderate advantage in military expenditure. On
the other hand, in three cases the model fails to explain the outcome.
The most marked counterexample demonstrating the inadequacy of an
approach that identifies the ratio between military expenditures with
the balance of military power is provided by the Franco-Prussian War
of 1870-1871 in which a Prussia-led coalition of German states defeated
France. Prussia wins even though the model places it at an overwhelming
disadvantage. The model also fails to explain the outcome of the Second
157
World War and the Korean War. In the first case, however, its failure
may be due to the fact that the us enters the war later and the data re-
flecting its contribution to the coalition potential are not from the year
before the war. As for the Korean War, which ends in a stalemate, the
failure of the model can be attributed to the fact that the overwhelming
superiority in military expenditure on one side is offset by significantly
lower troop numbers.6
Conflict Year(s) Victor (coalition) Military
expendi-
ture
Defeated
(coalition)
Military
expendi-
ture
Prepon-
derance
index
Crimean War 1853-
1856
France 17,257 Russia 15,692 1.75
United Kingdom 10,132
Second Italian
War of Inde-
pendence
1859-
1860 France 19,967 Austria 12,835 1.56
Austro-Prus-
sian War 1866 Prussia 5,950 Austria 9,121 1.65
Italy 9,102
Franco-Prus-
sian War
1870-
1871 Prussia 10,196 France 23,912 0.43
Russo-Japa-
nese War 1905 Japan 67,273 Russia 50,305 1.34
First World
War
1914-
1918
Russia 73,512 Germany 63,926 3.34
United Kingdom 67,957 Austria 27,376
USA 62,825
France 61,367
Italy 38,849
Second World
War
1939-
1945
Russia 5,429,984 Germany 7,415,163 0.95
United Kingdom 1,863,997 Japan 1,699,210
USA 1,131,499 Italy 746,050
France 919,284
Korean War 1950-
1953 USA 13503000 China 2,030,000 6.65
Kargil War 1999 India 13594000 Pakistan 4,078,000 3.33
Before 1913, the data are in thousands of GBP in the prices of the given year; since 1914 similarly in
thousands of USD
Table 1
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If comparing military expenditure produces at least a limited cor-
relation between superiority in this area and the outcome of the war,
the numerical strength of armies seems to lack explanatory potential
almost entirely (see Table 2). This model can only explain four of the
nine cases. An overwhelming numerical preponderance may have been
the reason for the victories of Indian forces in the Kargil conflict and of
the Entente Powers in the First World War. The victorious countries of
the Second World War had a significant advantage in this respect. In one
case (Austro-Prussian War), the victorious coalition of Prussia and Italy
had a moderate numerical preponderance. In the Second Italian War
of Independence, France defeats Austria in a situation of parity. What
is far more significant, however, is the fact that in the Crimean, Fran-
co-Prussian, Russo-Japanese and Korean wars, the numerically stronger
army fails to win, thus indicating a failure of the statistical model. In
the case of the Crimean war the failure can be partly explained by the
involvement of Turkey, which, if taken into account, would bring the
two sides to a parity of forces, although, for the purposes of the model,
Turkey in 1856 is no longer a great power. A critical failure of the model
can be demonstrated on the example of the Russo-Japanese War and
the Franco-Prussian War.
To better explain the cases where one of the parties is preponderant
in the number of personnel, while the other in military expenditure,
I have compiled a composite index of preponderance (Table 3). This
index should help explain such cases as the Korean War. The index is
an average value, calculated from the victorious party’s preponderance
indexes in the two areas taken into account. Since preponderance in
military expenditure need not be equally significant as preponderance
in troop numbers, I have calculated three versions of the index. The
first (v. 1) is the actual arithmetical mean of the preponderance indexes
in the two areas. The second index (v. 2) assumes that preponderance
in military expenditure is twice as significant as numerical advantage
in military personnel. Conversely, the third index (v. 3) works with the
assumption that a numerically preponderant army is twice as significant
for the outcome as preponderance in military expenditure.
However, even after compiling the composite index of preponder-
ance, based on both military expenditure and the numerical strength of
armies, the predictive value of the model has not improved significantly.
159
Conflict Year(s) Victor (coalition) Troop
num-
bers
Defeated
(coali-
tion)
Troop
num-
bers
Pre-
ponder-
ance
index
Crimean War 1853-1856 France 397 Russia 756 0.79
United Kingdom 201
Second Italian
War of Independ-
ence
1859-1860
France 427 Austria 403 1.06
Austro-Prussian
War 1866 Prussia 216 Austria 292 1.46
Italy 209
Franco-Prussian
War 1870-1871 Prussia 318 France 474 0.67
Russo-Japanese
War 1905 Japan 218 Russia 1160 0.19
First World War 1914-1918
Russia 1,434 Germany 716 3.04
United Kingdom 523 Austria 322
USA 155
France 642
Italy 398
Second World War 1939-1945
Russia 1,566 Germany 782 1.74
United Kingdom 376 Japan 370
USA 330 Italy 486
France 581
Korean War 1950-1953 USA 1,615 China 2,570 0.63
Kargil War 1999 India 1,300 Pakistan 590 2.20
In thousands of soldiers
The version which represents the actual arithmetic mean of the two
preponderance indexes can explain six of the nine cases. However, it
once again fails in the case of the Franco-Prussian War, the Russo-Jap-
anese War and the Korean War. The assumption that an advantage in
troop numbers is less significant than higher military expenditure fares
slightly better.
Table 2
160
With the calculation method thus altered, the Russo-Japanese War
becomes a parity situation, which cannot be regarded as a complete
failure of the model. On the other hand, attributing greater significance
to troop numbers than to military expenditure would lead us back to
firm expectations of Russian victory. The Crimean War would then
seem a parity situation.
All the failures pointed out above demonstrate how problematic
it is to assume a causal relationship between preponderance in both
areas and the outcome of the war. At the same time, they confirm the
limited predictive power of quantitative models. Without including a
qualitative analysis, it is impossible to rule out the role of other factors
that may have determined the outcome. Since a theory, under prede-
Conflict Year(s) Victor (coalition) Defeated
(coalition)
Composite index
v. 1v. 2v. 3
Crimean War 1853-1856 France Russia 1.27 1.43 0.95
United Kingdom
Second Italian War
of Independence 1859-1860 France Austria 1.31 1.39 1.23
Austro-Prussian
War 1866 Prussia Austria 1.56 1.59 1.52
Italy
Franco-Prussian
War 1870-1871 Prussia France 0.55 0.51 0.59
Russo-Japanese
War 1905 Japan Russia 0.77 0.96 0.57
First World War 1914-1918
Russia Germany 3.19 3.24 3.14
United Kingdom Austria
USA
France
Italy
Second World War 1939-1945
Russia Germany 1.34 1.21 1.48
United Kingdom Japan
USA Italy
France
Korean War 1950-1953 USA China 3.65 4.64 2.64
Kargil War 1999 India Pakistan 2.77 2.95 2.58
Table 3
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Jan Ludvík
fined conditions, must hold true for all cases, the hypothesized causal
relationship need only be disproved once. For this purpose, then, the
text analyses the case of the Franco-Prussian War, which exemplifies
the model’s critical failure.
Explanation of the critical failure
In the summer of 1870, Prussia stunned Europe by its Blitzkrieg victory
over France. Its army seemed to emerge almost out of nowhere. Since
the defeat of Napoleon till the victory in the Battle of Königgrätz it
had not fought a single major battle. In contrast, French armies had
been victorious on the Crimean Peninsula and in Italy. French military
professionals had also been hardened by the fierce fighting in Algeria
and Mexico. The French government could (and should) have been
warned by the outcome of the Austro-Prussian War four years earlier.
However, most observers quickly attributed the Prussian victory simply
to technological advantage represented by the breech-loading needle
guns of the Prussian infantry. By that time, Europe had grown so used
to Hapsburg defeats that it didn’t pay much attention.
The case of the Franco-Prussian war is crucial for determining to what
extent peacetime statistics are helpful for assessing strategic balance.
In this war, Prussia defeats France despite the fact that, according to
our model, the country is at an overwhelming disadvantage in military
expenditure and also significantly outnumbered in military personnel.
An adequate strategic balance model should be able to provide viable
explanations (with the exception of the role of chance, which cannot
be adequately evaluated in any model). An analysis of the conflict can
uncover a number of aspects which assumption about the relation be-
tween strategic balance and military expenditure/number of military
personnel simply does not take into account.
The two great powers clashed on a scale probably unsurpassed by any
of the other conflicts under analysis, with the exception of the two world
wars. The outcome cannot be explained by a merely partial deployment
of forces by one of the great powers. Also, the French collapse can be
satisfactorily explained neither by a difference in tactics between the
opposing parties, nor by the involvement of Prussia’s allies.
On Prussia’s side we find three relatively important South German
states: Bavaria, Baden and Württemberg. However, even after adding
their forces and defence expenditure, France still significantly outspends
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and moderately outnumbers the Prussian side.
7
The failure of the model
thus cannot be ascribed to the fact that Prussia was aided by allies. Even
after factoring in their contribution, the model still predicts French
victory, the only anticipated difference being that the French would
prevail less overwhelmingly.
On the level of tactics, dicult to capture in a strategic balance model,
the French and the Germans are almost on a par. On the whole, Prussian
commanders do not differ greatly in quality from their French counter-
parts, von Moltke being perhaps the only exception. On the contrary:
as has been aptly noted by Conrad Prince, the commander of the First
Prussian Army, General Karl von Steinmetz almost rivals his opponents
in incompetence.
8
A combination of infantry, cavalry and artillery forms
the core of the combat forces on both sides. Both armies are divided
into corps, about 30,000 men strong, made up by two to four divisions.
The importance of cavalry is slowly but steadily diminishing and, on an
industrial-warfare battlefield, will not be crucial for either of the parties.
Prussia has the advantage of superior artillery, equipped with Krupp’s
steel cannons. France, however, has learned one lesson from the Austrian
defeat in 1866, introducing state-of-the-art chassepot infantry rifles; with
an effective range double that of the Prussian firearms.
The main reason for Prussia’s victory was the country’s ability to adapt
to the changing times. Nationalism, the industrial revolution and the
new opportunities it brought had been changing the world’s battlefields.
The crushing defeat of France was caused by three key factors: a) the
existence of a truly effective Prussian General Staff, b) a different or-
ganization of the army, c) Prussia’s better management of logistics and
mobilization at the beginning of the war.
The Prussian General Staff, headed by Helmuth von Moltke, was
the key to the other two advantages mentioned. Von Moltke filled the
General Staff with the crème de la crème of Kriegsakademie graduates,
and supervised a further honing of their skills and capabilities. Many
commanders of Prussian divisions and brigades had gone through this
training and the commander of each Prussian corps could consult his
Chief of Staff, well acquainted with von Moltke’s intentions and his style
of warfare. In peacetime, the General Staff prepared the Prussian army
for war. In contrast, France had no real plan for the war with Prussia. Its
system of command perpetuated the Napoleonic tradition. While Prussia
established its General Staff as a substitute for “individual genius”, the
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The Poverty
of Statistics
French relied excessively on their supreme command. Unfortunately,
Napoleon iii with his marshals was far less capable than his uncle.
Of the two remaining causes, the different organization of the army
in particular is crucial for demonstrating the deficiencies of the model.
Prussia reformed its army in the 1860s under the leadership of the Min-
ister of War, Albrecht von Roon. With the exception of commissioned
and non-commissioned ocers, its ranks were filled by universal con-
scription that almost no one could avoid. After three years of service,
Prussian conscripts had to serve another four years in the army reserve
and thereafter were transferred to Landwehr. In contrast, the French army
was, in June 1870, composed of some 277,000 long-serving professionals
and 173,000 poorly trained reserves. 9 The French system was based on
a specific concept of the defence duty: a lottery was held to determine
which of the men subject to military service would actually be drafted.
However, the person selected merely had the obligation to provide the
state with a soldier. Whoever was suciently rich could afford to send
a substitute. The soldiers who had already completed their compulsory
years of service were encouraged to stay on – and most of them did, for
want of better prospects outside the army. While Paris did realize that
the system needed reform, the reform itself was extremely unpopular
and could hardly be carried out by the unstable regime. In 1868, Minister
of War Adolphe Niel implemented a compromise. The lottery continued
to select part of the men born in a given year for five-year service, after
which they spent four years in the army reserve. The rest, including
those who sent a substitute, were to go through five-month training,
after which they would serve for five years in what was called Garde
Mobile. The Garde Mobile would have a three-week intensive training
every year. However, the parliament made alterations to Niel’s original
plan: not only was the annual training of the Garde Mobile shortened
to two weeks, but the soldiers even returned home every night. In 1870,
the French drafting system was thus in the middle of a half-hearted
transformation attempt. The Garde Mobile was still largely untrained,
unequipped and unorganized.10
In theory, France could have used the advantage it had in its longer-serv-
ing professional soldiers to launch a quick attack against the Prussian
initial positions and thus disrupt the enemy’s mobilization effort. Von
Moltke was not only aware of this threat, but also took precautions, draw-
ing on the experience of the last war. The Prussian General Staff drew up
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plans of the mobilization, focusing, amongst other things, on the most
effective use of railroads. In the course of just eighteen days, 1,183,000
soldiers passed through Germany’s military barracks and 462,000 were
sent to the French border. With a quick enough mobilization of forces,
France had a good chance of victory. Realizing this, the French decided
to send their troops directly to the front, without waiting for reserves
and materiel, both of which were to be delivered directly to the Fran-
co-German border. However, this led to enormous logistics problems on
the railroads, which could perhaps have been solved if France’s general
staff had been as competent and ecient as the Prussian one and had
dealt with the logistics in advance. Instead, French railroads plunged
into chaos. The trains waited at the stations with no one to unload them,
while the troops at the front lacked materiel, and the still unemptied
wagons were already sorely needed elsewhere. Materiel was abundant,
but the distribution system broke down completely.
In the 1860s, Prussia built an army that fully reflected the needs and
conditions of the time – and the outcome of the war was a confirma-
tion of this. On the surface, the French army looked no worse than the
Prussian one. But Roon and Moltke managed to transform the Prussian
army into an effective training institution, which made capable soldiers
of most Prussian men. The chosen manner of organization was well
suited to contemporary technology and tactics. The Prussian soldier
was suciently trained for serving in the field. A large army made up of
conscripts was at an advantage against a smaller, de facto professional
force. Without taking into account the mobilization potential, logistics
plans and the qualitative advantage represented by Prussia’s General
Staff, it would be impossible to comprehend how Prussia could defeat
France so crushingly.
Conclusion
Distribution of military power has a clear impact on the functioning of
the international system. It is a fairly customary procedure to determine
this distribution by comparing national military expenditures and the
numerical strength of national military forces. However, war as a re-
al-world confrontation of military power takes little heed of peacetime
spending or personnel statistics and often grants victory to the party
which, based on the statistician’s records of pre-war expenditure and
troop numbers, should be destined for defeat. This text convincingly
165
Jan Ludvík
demonstrates that there is no causal relationship between peacetime
preponderance in terms of expenditure and personnel numbers, and the
outcome of a war. Although a certain level of positive correlation can be
shown to exist, i.e., in very general terms, it is true that the state with
higher defence expenditure and a larger army has a statistically greater
chance of winning the war, these characteristics are nothing more than
imprecise indicators. Out of the nine great power wars examined, no
more than six have been won by the state with larger pre-war military
spending. Only four of these wars have been won by the state which, in
peacetime, kept a larger army. The example of the Franco-Prussian War
shows that not even preponderance in both areas provides sucient
safeguard against crushing defeat, let alone guarantees victory. The
military power of a state consists solely in its ability to adapt effective-
ly to the demands of modern warfare. Neither a large army, nor high
defence expenditures can in themselves guarantee that.
#
jan ludvík is a research fel low a t the Cent re for Security Policy, Char les
University in Prague. He can be reached at ludvik@fsv.cuni.cz
Notes
1 The writing of this text has been supported by grant from the Programme
of Security Research in the Czech Republic 2010-2015, administered by the
Czech Ministry of the Interior “Adaptation of the Security System of the
Czech Republic to the Changing Economic, Social, Demographic and Geo-
political Realities” (vg20132015112). The author thanks his colleagues from
the Centre for Security Policy for insightful comments. Special gratitude is
due to Mr Luděk Moravec, whose critical insights have once again proved
invaluable.
2 Cf. e.g., Hans J. Morgenthau and Kenneth W. Thompson, Politics among
nations: the struggle for power and peace (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993);
Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of international politics (Boston, Mass.: McGraw-
Hill, 1979); Kenneth N. Waltz, “Structural Realism after the Cold War,” In-
ternational Security 26:1 (2001): 5-41; John J. Mearsheimer, The tragedy of
great power politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002).
3 Good overview of the literature is given by Stephen Biddle, Military Power:
Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 2004):14-27.
4 The databases of the Correlates of War project are available at www.cor-
relatesofwar.org. Authors working with databases of interstate wars can
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consult Meredith Reid Sarkees and Frank Whelon Wayman, Resort to war:
a data guide to inter-state, extra-state, intra-state, and non-state wars, 1816-
2007 (Washington, D.C.: cq Press, 2010). When working with a database
of national material capabilities it is possible to consult J. David Singer,
Stuart Bremer and John Stuckey, “Capability Distribution, Uncertainty,
and Major Power War, 1820-1965”, in Peace, war, and numbers, ed. Bruce
M. Russet (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1972): 19-48; J. David Singer,
“Reconstructing the Correlates of War dataset on material capabilities of
states, 1816-1985,” International Interactions 14:2 (1988): 115-132.
5 Cf. Ivan Arreguín-Toft, “How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmet-
ric Conflict,” International Security 26:1 (2001): 93-128.
6 For the sake of simplicity, the us features in the table as the victorious
party. This, however, is not an attempt to evaluate the outcome of the war,
but simply the wish to maintain a unified approach to the calculation of
the index. The designation of the us as the victorious party does not affect
the validity of the conclusions.
7 Bavaria contributes a 50,000-strong army and gbp 1,363,000 in defence
spending to the coalition. The two less important states, Baden and Würt-
temberg, have, in the year before the war, 15,000 and 14,000 men in arms
respectively and the defence expenditure of each slightly exceeds gbp
400,000 in contemporary prices. If taken into account, their contributions
would raise the preponderance index of the victorious side to 0.52 in mili-
tary spending and 0.84 in the number of military personnel.
8 Conrad Prince, “Metz 1870 – Marshal Franois Achille Bazaine: A Classic
Example of an Over-promoted Man,” Defence Studies 5:1 (2005): 101.
9 John G. Lorimer, “Why Would Modern Military Commanders Study the
Franco-Prussian War?,” Defence Studies 5:1 (2005): 111.
10 Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: the German invasion of France,
1870-1871 (New York: Routledge, 2001): 22-31.
