island states with no land borders, but that only represents 40% of the 37 sovereign states that
have no land borders’. The inconsistency goes further with countries that are small island
states and neighbouring each other choosing different paths, such as Antigua and Barbuda
which has a small military’ and sits next to Dominica that does not'®, or Tonga that maintains
multiple military units'’ and sits alongside Samoa that only has a largely unarmed police
force.
The second area of diversity between these states is that of population. While 16 of the 20
states have less than one million people a small population does not in and of itself rule out
having a military. Using the examples above of Dominica and Antigua and Barbuda, both have
similar populations of around 80,000 but one has a military and one does not. The example of
Tonga and Samoa is more striking where at 200,000 Samoa has nearly twice the population of
Tonga but remains unarmed. There is considerable difference between the smallest being
again Nauru at 10,000"? and the largest being Haiti at 10.8 million people? Once again there
are states smaller in population than Haiti that have significant military forces including
Sweden, Singapore, Israel, and Jordan?'. Along with having the smallest land area, the Vatican
City has the smallest population in the world but does maintain the military Swiss Guard. As
with physical area the issue of population seems influential but not absolute.
Military forces are expensive and wealth can be a factor in deciding whether a military is in the
national interest. Like the other factors though there is significant diversity in the 20 countries
without armed forces. There is a mixture of high, medium and low income countries in the
group of 20 with 1596 being high income, 5596 being upper middle income, 2596 being lower
middle income and 596 being low income. This has 2596 of the unarmed states above the world
average for income?" In Human Development terms 1596 have Very High Human
Development, 45% have High, 30% have Medium and 10% have Low. This means 55% of the
states are above the world average for Human Development”. Just as with land area and
'* Central Intelligence Agency, 941.
" Ibid, 33.
'° Ibid, 248.
' Ibid, 856.
"8 Ibid, 731.
?? Ibid, 601.
2 Ibid, 374.
? International Institute for Strategic Studies, 143-145, 286-290, 333-336, 336-338.
2http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.CD?order=wbapi data value 2014+wbapi
data value*wbapi data value-last&sort-desc , retrieved 2 July 2017.
2 http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr 2016 statistical annex.pdf . Entries for Tuvalu,
Nauru and the Marshall Islands are estimates drawn from David Hastings, Filling Gaps in the
Human Development Index: Findings for Asia and the Pacific , (Bangkok: UNESCAP