فصلنامه راهبرد دفاعی
پیاپی 23 (زمستان 1387)

The US Department of Defense published a document, in 2008, entitled the National Defense Strategy. This strategy emphasizes that the security environment and threat against the USA have changed. However, these developments are not correspondent with the US defense capabilities. Therefore, a balance should be established between structure and optimization of the capacities and all challenges and threats. The author of the paper, the US Secretary of Defense, believes that the Pentagon should act beyond renovation of its conventional forces and has to focus on unconventional threats of today and future. For him, the problem of Iraq and Afghanistan are of the utmost importance for the United States and will keep being so in the coming years. One of the important arguments of this paper is that any crisis should not and cannot be followed by the US military reaction.

Military expenditure is one of the indicators of military and defense capabilities of the countries. However, the relevant statistics are published based on various intentions and purposes which if not analyzed carefully, it would be misleading. Of course, to overcome this problem is not a major problem and for instance comparative study and consulting with different sources some of the ways to reach the reality. It needs to highlight that if a standard way and a holistic approach is adopted, validity of the relevant findings will increase. Having said that, the current paper, with a glance to the conceptual aspect of defense expenditures and the common ways of measurement of military and defense power in some international institutes like the United Nations, International Monetary Found and some others, attempts to introduce a standard way for measurement of military expenditures.

One of the new indicators of power is defense treaties which both the Realists and Neo-Realists have paid attention to it. In this way, their conclusion is that in order to survive and overcome the chaos in the international arena, reaching self-help ability is necessary for the actors of international system and on the other hand, in order to survive, they need to take part in the regional and international treaties and coalitions. For them, any kind of coalition and defense treaty is among the elements of national power that is of significance in playing an effective regional role. In general, defense treaties and coalitions can be assumed as a signal of "effective power" in national defense, achieving national power and to triumph over threats. Within the framework of balance of power, bi-polar and non-polar systems, defense treaties are of defense-security function. To prove this argument, the paper employs the Neo-Realistic approach and defense treaties are treated as elements of balance of power.

National power does have several aspects including, military, political and social. However, for many observers, the ultimate criterion for national power lies in its military aspect. And one of the important issues in the field of military power is to study and recognize its effective elements and also possibility of measuring the military power of other countries. All relevant problems and difficulties in this field are similar to those of national power measurement. Certainly one or two special variables (like number of the Army staff or number of personnel of the missile launchers of a country) can not be considered as proper criteria to evaluate military power of the countries, so does a unified variable which is not able to provide a useful evaluation about national power in general. This paper studies the fact that what elements and variable can be employed in evaluation of military power and how much they are useful in evaluation and measurement of military power of other countries.

Evaluation of the Chinese defense power and strategy based on the Defense Document of 2008 and from the view point of this country's decision makers and strategists illustrates the relationship between variables like conceptual and concrete security and necessity of revision in the factors of defense power to manage the changing environment at national and supra-national levels. Based on this document, modernization and mechanization of the Chinese army require employment of science, industry and technology in the military. These are important in assessment of the ability to research and development and production. Within this framework, the Chinese strategists are emphasizing the inter-linkages and interaction between military and economic aspects and also the necessity in creating a balance between them. As the Chinese grand strategy is defined within a peaceful development framework, realization of this strategy requires, achieving regional and internal prestige through confidence building; this aspect is one of the main features of strategic Power of the countries. The Chinese partnership in the international trends is an instance of this feature.

Defense policy as an indicator of defense power has a decisive role in leading the defense strategies and also it is steering possibilities and capacities towards a special direction. According to its principles, defense policy attempts to secure the country and strengthen its security. This degree of importance shows the necessity of defense policy. Of course, given the strategic level of defense policy, the relevant indicators to evaluate it are general too. In this paper, the necessity of evaluation of defense policy is discussed first, and then the focus will be on the concept and characteristics of defense policy as well as its principles, origins and indicators of evaluation of defense policy. Based on one of the findings of this paper, ignoring the evaluation of defense policy is misleading and changes priorities that finally can waste the resources. In fact, vitality of defense policy is subject to evaluation and reform of the past policies.

For many strategists, military power is the final criterion to measure the national power. In the mean time, military forces are supporting follow up and implementation of the national policies. Due to this importance, the paper is to tackle the indicators of military power and ways of their selection and then the paper aims to answer the following questions: What are the main indicators for measurement of military power? Dose using various indicators to measure the military power, increase curiosity of the evaluations? To answer these questions, the author's hypothesis is that the main indicators of measurement of military power of the countries are the size of armed forces and Gross Domestic Product. This hypothesis is experimented in this paper using documentary and archive method of research together with context approach and the Campbell's semi-experimental method. Another finding of this paper is that using several indicators in measurement of military power increases the liability of findings of analysts.

In order to achieve supremacy in terms of defense and security, which is enshrined in the 20-year Vision of Iran, a holistic approach towards National power and defense strength is required. This, in turn, needs sufficient national resources, a proper national performance and establishment of advanced defense capabilities. Shaping higher military and security capabilities is subject to allocation of the enough needed resources, promotion of management and organizational capacities of the Defense branch as well as the ability to render them into military and battlefield advantages. Therefore, a 9-layer framework is introduced in this paper to measure the military capabilities of Iran in the area of land, sea and air forces and in the meantime, the issue of defense strength is evaluated based on technology and organizational integration. It is a duty of the high-ranking managers to comparatively and in a continuous way, follows up military capability of other countries; both in regional and global level and move forward to promote their capabilities according to the final Prospective (holistic superiority and knowledge oriented defense).