Hierarchy of Countries

If you had to prepare a modern day hierarchical classification of nations, you might think that that's an easy call! But is it really? Coming out of the two world wars in human history, some countries on the winning side did receive a better deal than others at the time, the major players getting a permanent seat and the veto power at the United Nations Security Council to appease each other. However, almost a century has passed since then and the US-Russia faction leaders' cold war heydays are over... A lot has obviously changed, but the original perception of hierarchy has persisted among the 195 countries today, irrespective of their actual standing in the present day world scenario. So, I began to ask myself who are the real biggies of today, strictly going by current statistical data, without any regional biases.

Accordingly, I have ranked the nations of the world based on four important parameters, i.e. economy (in terms of GDP), military (in terms of defence budget), population and area, in the decreasing order of significance, for the previous fiscal year, as summarized in the table below.

While the above table is self-explanatory, it does have some interesting details. While the United States is still running strong as the leader of the pack both economically and militarily, with its well-deserved ego still intact, ever since they built the world's first nuclear warhead, I suppose Russia's fourth place is to be expected, as the Russian economy drastically fell after the split of the erstwhile Soviet Union or USSR in 1991. And while China has been making its presence felt since a long time, India has made commendable progress in the short seven decades since its independence from the British Rule in 1947, so much so that the United States Trade Representatives or USTR removed India from its list of developing nations in 2019.

With the top 3 spots of the aforementioned list, taken by the USA, China and India, and some of the other well-known nations from the West and the East featuring in the remainder of the list, a new threat in the form of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic might become a notable decision maker in this regard, in the years to come. All in all, we must appreciate that such a hierarchy of countries is highly competitive and dynamic, and may change from year to year depending on the factors outlined and possibly others. So, it is crucial for all countries to remain level-headed in constant pursuit of global progress, instead of riding high horses or hiding in shacks of shame due to past glories or debacles, as the case may be. Welcome to the morrow!