World's Most Powerful Countries? world top 5 powerful country in 2020 |

Power projection. This has become like an everyday affair now. Nations around the world are continuously ramping up their capabilities. And why are they doing this? Well in simple words, Just to protect themselves from each other. It may sound stupid. But agree or not, that's how the world works.
The United States retains the top spot in this list. US is the most powerful country ever, both numerically and technologically. And it certainly spends more on its military budget than any other country.
The US Military is equipped with the most advanced tanks, aircrafts, Submarines, and ships. Along with the advanced technology, the US Military has a lot of experience in fighting wars in different parts of the world. So they have a good battle tested force. But, having the strongest military is not the only thing that makes US the most powerful nation. It's actually the US alliance which makes US more secure, and stronger.
You see after the end of World War 2, US and Soviet Union were only two major superpowers. And that time Europe was in a weak position, and they were worried that the Soviets might invade them, and spread communism in Europe. So to resist this possible invasion, the US formed a collective alliance with 11 other countries. And this was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO.
These alliance's gave the US significant importance in world politics. It has also given them a significant amount of global military bases, and first line of defence. So all of these things make the United States more powerful than anyone.
Russia.
After the end of World War 2, Russia formerly known as Soviet union was the only nation on earth that could go head to head with the US. Infact in some categories the Soviet Union out matched the US military. In Fact in the 80s Soviet Union had more manpower, tanks, tower artillery, and submarines than the US.
But, all of this came to a sudden end with the collapse of Soviet union. Although after the formation of Russian Federation in 1991, they acquired most of the Soviet made weapons, but they struggled to maintain them. Thousands of nuclear weapons, tanks, aircrafts, and submarines began to suffer the effects of budget cuts. And now most of them are beyond repairable. In 1988 defence spending of Soviet Union was around $250 billion but by 1992 this spending came down to only $40 billion, and continued to fall for the rest of the 90s.
Then by the start of 2000s things started to change. The Russian economy was growing steadily, and so was the defence budget. In 2008 a massive military reform program was launched, the goal was to reach 70 percent modernization by the year 2020. And yes they have really achieved most of their goals.
In the past two decades Russia has modernized their military. They also created new weapon platforms such as the 5th gen fighter aircrafts, air defence systems, and advanced cyber warfare capabilities. They have proven some of their weapons in Syria.

China's rise as a military power has become possible because of its rapid economic development.
The economic growth gave china resources for research, and development of weapons. China's military spending has grown steadily since 2000. But in the last decade it took a five fold shoot, and reached nearly $200 billion.
China's air and naval capabilities are catching up with the west. The country has successfully made 5th gen fighter aircrafts, aircraft carriers, nuclear powered submarines, and much more.
India.
Similar to China, India's economy has also grown in the past two decades. Because of this India also saw a steady increase in their military spending. They went from $14 billion in 2000, to nearly 71 billion in 2019. Much of this increased Military budget was dedicated to modernizing the military due to the rise of China.
India is the only country in this list which is currently operating both Russian, and US weapon platforms. If you think that is a good thing then you are wrong. Using weapons from different countries makes things difficult in today's network centric warfare. Although India is trying to alter this situation by replacing the old Russian made platform by Western, and domestically made ones. Still so far India has made some progress specially in domestically made weapons. And in recent times they have also demonstrated its capabilities of domestically built weapons by testing it multiple times.
Now Along with these 4 nations, there are few other countries which could be in this list in the coming time. We are talking about Japan, France, and the UK.
Each of them has a powerful military, and also good alliance's. So they stand a good chance to make their way up.

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