Taking into account quantity and quality, the ten most deadly armies on the planet belong to China, the United States, India, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, Turkey, Israel, Pakistan and Iran. America isn't on top because, while our ground forces are formidable, superior equipment and training go only so far to make up for the numerical advantage the Chinese have.

We saw that fifty years ago in Korea. The Chinese used manpower to make up for less technology and fought us to a standstill. It can happen again.

For more details on how the top ten were selected, wander over to the Top Ten section of strategypage.com.

America's defense budget comprises about half of what all the top ten military powers spend each year. For all that money the United States gets several unique benefits.

First, the U.S. Navy is indisputably the master of the world's oceans. Anyone confronting the American fleet faces almost certain defeat. The most they can expect is to inflict some damage. And even that would be difficult.

The second advantage is that America is the only nation that can send substantial military forces anywhere on the planet. It can do this quickly, which in itself is an advantage. Getting there first gives you more control over the situation. America also spends billions each year to maintain the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. Perhaps most important, buried in the U.S. defense budget are billions for the world's largest intelligence gathering organization. Make that organizations. We may not know everything, but we generally know more than anyone else.

The other armies are the most powerful in their neighborhoods. This is what makes them so dangerous, for any of these armies is powerful enough to invade any of its neighbors. Most countries don't have that much military power. Sometimes, as with the two Koreas and India and Pakistan, two nations in the area have powerful armies. This has always, through all of recorded history, created a tense situation. In most cases, these heavily armed confrontations have led to war.

In the case of the two Koreas, superpower politics and the threat of nuclear weapons has kept the peace for nearly fifty years. India and Pakistan are an even more nerve-wracking situation, made worse when both developed and tested nuclear weapons in 1998. These two neighbors fought wars in 1965 and 1971, both of which Pakistan lost, big time. In early 1999, a small, but nasty, war was fought four miles up in the mountains bordering the Indian and Pakistani portions of Kashmir. Pakistan denied that it was involved, blaming Kashmiri rebels.

Since nuclear weapons are seen as a nation's ultimate guarantee of national survival, everyone was worried that India would escalate the "Kargil War" (named for the Kashmiri district it was fought in) by using its larger tank force to invade Pakistan by the lowland route. At that point, Pakistan's only option would have been surrender, or use nukes.

Since both nations had a few dozen nukes between them, the result would have been a few million dead, a lot of radioactivity in the atmosphere, and Pakistan still would have lost. All of this mainly because both nations could. Nations with smaller armies can rant and rattle sabers, but are incapable of much more. In the case of the Kargil war, Pakistan backed down. This cost the Pakistani leader his job and landed him in prison. He was replaced by the head of the armed forces. The guerrilla war continues in Kashmir, as do artillery duels across the border.

The rest of the top ten armies also present some problems. Iran is still considered a threat to its Arab neighbors, and skirmishing continues on the Iraqi border. Iran has massed forces on its Afghan border, but is mainly concerned with heavily armed Afghan drug smugglers coming across.

Turkey and Greece have long standing grievances that lead to muttering and fiery speeches, but the Greeks are greatly outclassed. Meanwhile, Turkey has several thousand Kurdish rebels that require constant attention. Turkey's Arab neighbors have land and water claims on Turkey, but, again, the more powerful Turks keep these beefs from blowing up.

Israel and Switzerland (the latter not in the top ten) are special cases. They are "rapid mobilization" armies. Within a few days they can put half a million previously trained civilians into uniform, ready to fight. Israel has demonstrated several times that these troops are capable.

Russia's mighty "Red Army" is still collapsing because of the Soviet Union's disintegration. But the Russians are starting to rebuild, a process that will probably take a decade or more. Russia's neighbors nervously watch this process.

Following the top ten are Germany, Taiwan, Vietnam, France, Egypt, Iraq, Switzerland, Italy, Japan, Britain and Brazil.

Germany is still going through its post cold war downsizing, and creating a force more suited to peacekeeping. France, Italy, Japan, Switzerland and Britain are also reorganizing for the New World order. Iraq is still preparing for war, as is Taiwan. Egypt and Brazil have large forces of dubious value. But in Brazil's case, her neighbors are much weaker. Egypt has to watch out for Israel, although since they made peace with the Israelis, it is Libya and Sudan who have had to worry about the more numerous Egyptian troops next door.

Size does matter, and that is why the ten largest armies are the ones most often in the news.

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