A suggested model for the evaluation of strategic significance

Abstract

Strategic significance is a generally misused concept with the result that evaluations of strategic significance are often unrealistic and arbitrary. This article seeks to identify some of the concepts that are operational in an evaluation of the strategic significance of any state. In so doing three basic criteria are identified? firstly, the spectrum of the state's national capability resources; secondly, the state's ego‐role perception; and thirdly, the perception of the regional and global external environment of the significance to their interests of the state concerned. These three criteria are seen to be interacting and dynamic in nature. This approach finds its rationale in the contemporary “total” nature of the concept of strategic significance (as opposed to the purely military emphasis) and the fact that no state can realistically be of strategic significance to itself.