World super powers

What are the most powerful countries in the world? What would make a country powerful?

This is a fairly simple and critical question if you want to understand global politics.

To be a superpower a country needs to have the following characteristics:

1. A large population
2. A large economy measured by GDP
3. A high average income per household, measured by GDP per capita
4. Large land area

A country that beats other countries on these four metrics is considered a global superpower.

I was going to put military spending into the function, but with a correlation coefficient of 94% against GDP, it needs to be left out.

However, mean years of schooling correlate most with corruption, and only at a 62% coefficient. But… it has a non-linear exponential relationship with GDP per capita, so again, I am omitting this variable.

I standardized each variable on a scale of 0-1 and then took the average. Sometimes the simplest methods are the best.

The ten most powerful countries in the world are then as follows:

Rank	Country	Population	GDP	GDP per capita	SIPRI 2022	Total Area	Democracy Score	NATO	Great Power
1	United States	0.987952	1.000000	0.962500	1.000000	0.988764	7.92	1	0.984804
2	Canada	0.789157	0.943750	0.912500	0.917722	0.992509	9.24	1	0.909479
3	China	1.000000	0.993750	0.625000	0.993671	0.985019	2.27	0	0.900942
4	Japan	0.939759	0.987500	0.881250	0.943038	0.749064	8.13	0	0.889393
5	Brazil	0.975904	0.950000	0.643750	0.898734	0.981273	6.92	0	0.887732
6	France	0.891566	0.968750	0.862500	0.955696	0.827715	7.99	1	0.887633
7	Germany	0.915663	0.981250	0.906250	0.962025	0.745318	8.67	1	0.887120
8	Russia	0.951807	0.937500	0.656250	0.987342	1.000000	3.31	0	0.886389
9	Australia	0.704819	0.925000	0.937500	0.924051	0.977528	8.96	0	0.886212
10	Mexico	0.945783	0.918750	0.631250	0.829114	0.943820	6.07	0	0.859901

SIPRI is military expenditure.

The United States is the most powerful country in the world. All but two of the countries on this list are democracies.

If we omit area, only Germany and the United States are in the top 10th percentile for GDP, GDP per capita, and population.

China and Russia would be global superpowers, but their GDP per capita is too low.

The only authoritarian regime (measured by the EIU Democracy Index with a value of less than 4) with a GDP per capita in the 90th percentile is Qatar.

The United States, Germany, Canada, and Australia are the only countries with GDP per capita and GDP in the top 10th percentile. Germany is under 90% in area, Canada and Australia are under 90% in population.

Canada is the only country besides the United States with a population, GDP per capita, GDP, and area above the 80th percentile.

Three authoritarian regimes have great power scores over 0.8: China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.

The least powerful countries in the world are:

Index	Country	Population	GDP	GDP per capita	SIPRI 2022	Surface area	Overall Score	NATO	Great Power
405	Tuvalu	0.005208	0.005208	0.348958	NaN	0.015625	NaN	0	0.093750
203	Kiribati	0.088542	0.015625	0.239583	NaN	0.119792	NaN	0	0.115885
239	Marshall Islands	0.036458	0.020833	0.385417	NaN	0.031250	NaN	0	0.118490
85	Comoros	0.182292	0.052083	0.130208	NaN	0.130208	3.09	0	0.123698
334	Sao Tome and Principe	0.104167	0.036458	0.250000	NaN	0.125000	NaN	0	0.128906
245	Micronesia	0.067708	0.031250	0.359375	NaN	0.093750	NaN	0	0.138021
390	The Gambia	0.255208	0.078125	0.052083	0.038961	0.182292	NaN	0	0.141927
394	Tonga	0.072917	0.041667	0.401042	NaN	0.106771	NaN	0	0.155599
264	Nauru	0.010417	0.010417	0.609375	NaN	0.010417	NaN	0	0.160156
422	Vanuatu	0.109375	0.062500	0.333333	NaN	0.192708	NaN	0	0.174479

No country has a population and GDP per capita in the bottom 10th percentile.

If we only include countries with no missing values in our dataset, we see the following:

Index	Country	Population	GDP	GDP per capita	SIPRI 2022	Surface area	Overall Score	NATO	Great Power
167	Guinea-Bissau	0.239583	0.088542	0.088542	0.071429	0.302083	2.63	0	0.179688
391	Timor-Leste	0.218750	0.140625	0.208333	0.097403	0.208333	7.06	0	0.194010
220	Lesotho	0.265625	0.156250	0.171875	0.084416	0.286458	6.30	0	0.220052
59	Burundi	0.557292	0.171875	0.005208	0.175325	0.260417	2.14	0	0.248698
221	Liberia	0.375000	0.145833	0.046875	0.045455	0.473958	5.32	0	0.260417
392	Togo	0.484375	0.203125	0.067708	0.305195	0.359375	2.80	0	0.278646
340	Sierra Leone	0.479167	0.187500	0.057292	0.064935	0.395833	4.86	0	0.279948
137	Fiji	0.192708	0.213542	0.505208	0.110390	0.218750	5.72	0	0.282552
252	Moldova	0.322917	0.250000	0.260417	0.103896	0.296875	5.78	0	0.282552
255	Montenegro	0.171875	0.197917	0.583333	0.168831	0.197917	5.77	1	0.287760

Comoros is the only country in the world where every metric is below the 20th percentile.

Tuvalu has the lowest power score in my dataset. It is not scored on military expenditures because it has no military. However, it ranks in the 34th percentile for GDP per capita.

This is why I believe Comoros is the least powerful country in the world. Its population is small, its economy is tiny, and its people are poor.

While the United States is the most powerful country in the world, I believe Comoros is the least powerful country.