Comprehensive national power: measuring a state’s resilience and influence
On 8 April 2026, the World Bank linked a weaker regional growth outlook to disrupted navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and damage to infrastructure. For Iraq, that assessment makes national power a practical question: what is a large resource worth if its route to market narrows? A higher price for a commodity a country owns does not necessarily increase spending capacity when the quantity it can sell is disrupted. An external shock can pressure budgets and services without changing the country's area, population or military assets. World Bank, 8 April 2026.
The April report alone does not establish navigation conditions in October, and its forecasts must not be treated as final economic outcomes. It does, however, expose the kind of test a power assessment needs: whether a country can convert its resources into continuing functions when the conditions of their use change. Iraq's problem extends beyond possessing oil or weapons. It concerns how much decision-making freedom, financing and service provision remains available under pressure, how long restoration takes and what society pays during the interruption.
Available wealth and usable capacity
World Bank estimates for 2025 put oil at 53% of Iraq's real GDP, 88% of government revenues and 91% of merchandise exports. These have different denominators—production, public financing and goods trade—and cannot be added together. Read jointly, however, they show how disruption in one activity can travel through several channels. Lower exports can constrain funding; delayed funding can postpone maintenance; deferred maintenance can weaken subsequent production and services. This is a possible causal chain whose links require testing, not a claim that oil explains every service deterioration. World Bank: Iraq economic overview.
In the working definition used here, comprehensive national power requires three connected elements: resources that can be mobilised, institutions that turn them into results, and a range of options that prevents a crisis from imposing a single decision on the state. Armed forces, the economy, knowledge, population and diplomacy contribute, but adding their sizes is insufficient. A sector may have enough money while fragmented spending authority delays its response. Modern equipment may exist without maintenance, personnel or reliable supplies. Asset inventories do not necessarily reveal either conversion failure.
A RAND study published in 2000 distinguished national resources, national performance and military capability. The distinction helps separate what a state owns, how it operates it and what it can produce from it. It is not a ready-made ranking for Iraq, nor does it remove the need to examine rights, services and interdependence. One institution's capability may rise while the economy financing it becomes more fragile. Strength in one part of the state should not be presumed to establish strength throughout it. RAND: Measuring National Power in the Postindustrial Age.
Military spending illustrates the difference. SIPRI explains that expenditure is an input, not a direct measure of military capability or security. A budget increase may fill a real gap or pay more for the same result; the spending figure cannot distinguish these possibilities. Assessment requires examining procurement's suitability for the mission, continued maintenance and training, and management's ability to correct failure. This is institutional evaluation, not a call to disclose operational details that could endanger institutions. SIPRI: sources and methods.
Resilience depends on time and alternatives, not reserves alone
A country able to absorb a short interruption may be unable to withstand a longer one even while its declared reserves remain large. A reserve's value depends on access speed, suitability and replenishment. Every resilience estimate therefore needs an explicit duration and assumption: which function must continue, under which shock and over what horizon? Calling a system “ready” without those conditions implies more than has actually been tested. Maintaining a service in the capital also does not establish that it can reach a remote area.
Norway illustrates how a volatile resource can be placed within a more sustainable fiscal arrangement: net petroleum revenues flow into its sovereign fund, while withdrawals are guided by expected real returns, estimated at 3%. That describes Norway's rule; it is not a proposed Iraqi percentage. The testable lesson is to separate the arrival of revenue from the decision to spend it, so that each temporary increase does not become a permanent commitment. Copying the number would ignore differences in savings, service needs and existing obligations. Norwegian Ministry of Finance: Government Pension Fund report, March 2026.
A fund does not remove risk. Financial savings expose the state to asset-price fluctuations and do not produce water or medicine during a supply-chain failure merely by appearing on the balance sheet. Financial strength needs mechanisms for timely access to goods and services. For Iraq, useful comparison begins by examining inflexible commitments, expenditure that can be deferred without accumulating harm, and the minimum maintenance and service funding that must be protected. Creating a savings vehicle without spending rules and oversight does not demonstrate this capacity.
An alternative also means more than a second supplier in a contract. Both suppliers may depend on the same corridor, financing source or hard-to-replace equipment. Diversity is then more nominal than real. Investment has strategic value when it reduces shared dependency, rather than adding another asset with the same vulnerability. Yet duplicating everything is costly. The task is to identify functions whose interruption would cause damage exceeding the cost of protection, and review that judgement periodically.
From separate assets to institutions working together
Finland's Security Strategy for Society, adopted in January 2025, protects vital functions through cooperation among authorities, businesses, organisations and citizens. The comparison matters because of how responsibility is organised. An institution's strength within its own mandate is insufficient if its function depends on an actor that does not share information or lacks authority to respond. Adopting a strategy does not prove every response successful; implementation and testing remain the objects of evaluation. Finnish Security Committee: Security Strategy for Society.
In Iraq, these relationships can be examined without starting with comprehensive restructuring. Choose a specific public function, then review who funds, operates and oversees it and which other actors it depends on. If failure stems from a missing, identifiable authority, further procurement will not fix it. If it stems from a demonstrated material shortage, another coordination committee will not compensate. Good diagnosis avoids prescribing the same remedy everywhere and makes responsibility for improvement identifiable instead of dispersing it across calls for “cooperation by all institutions”.
Public trust enters this calculation through observable effects, not as an ethical ornament to hard power. Clear information and procedures allow people and businesses to arrange alternatives and report faults; contradictory messages can drive costly precautionary decisions. Social objection does not itself mean state weakness. It may reveal information that administrative hierarchies do not transmit. The more useful test is whether institutions listen, correct and enforce law predictably while protecting peaceful objection. Cohesion that suppresses bad news may conceal fragility rather than repair it.
Making measurement useful for Iraqi decisions
I propose assessing each vital function through available capacity, dependence on external or single sources, continuity under shock, recovery time and the cost of maintaining it. These are proposed assessment dimensions, not a calculated index or a new international ranking. The result should not be a single score concealing differences, but an account of where financing, organisation or an external agreement changes effective capacity. Repairing a small weakness that controls major assets may deserve priority over acquiring more assets unable to operate independently of it.
This requires clear data responsibilities. The Ministry of Finance should explain the resilience of public commitments under stated assumptions; sector ministries should provide measures of continuity and recovery; strategic coordination bodies should examine their interconnections. Gaps and uncertainty must remain explicit. An unavailable number should not be replaced by a deceptively precise rating. It should be recorded as a limitation on confidence, with responsibility for filling the gap at reasonable cost identified.
External influence cannot be inferred from internal resilience alone. Iraq's ability to broaden its options also depends on agreement quality, reliable implementation and relationships that can endure different conditions. Interdependence can offer benefits and influence, or become exposure when alternatives disappear. The aim is not to eliminate every dependency, but to assess the costs of leaving or maintaining a relationship when circumstances change. Greater independence means executable options, not declarations of self-sufficiency unsupported by real capacity.
Comprehensive national power appears when resources remain usable, institutions keep functioning and options remain open under pressure. The 2026 developments discussed by the World Bank show how quickly the distance between owning a resource and accessing its returns can widen. Iraq needs to make that distance measurable and manageable: protect the most consequential functions, test alternatives, connect spending to results and revise what failed. Resilience can then underpin influence, rather than leaving the state's size on paper greater than its usable capacity when needed.