From an academic friend who would prefer to remain anonymous… as academics do a simply amazing amount of the time: “John—Here is the Nationmaster plot of GDP-per-capita vs. population:

“Here is the same plot, except that circles are now sized to absolute GDP: ”Note well the points in the lower right corner of the plot. Look at all those points. Those are all the countries with huge populations and terribly low standards of living in per-capita terms. And of course that directly impacts their military power as well. Where exactly does this guy get the idea that Indonesia, Brazil, and Nigeria are going to become more powerful than (say) France or Germany? Certainly that has not been the case over this past century.

“Note also that you can use the Buchanan argument — i.e. ‘JPod, it’s odd to see you agreeing with Pat Buchanan! He also has a fixation on absolute population size vis-a-vis the Death of The West type arguments’.”