

The Economist: The World's Biggest Military Spenders by Population - ComputerGuru
http://www.economist.com/daily/chartgallery/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13808801&source=features_box4

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ivankirigin
The US's dominant roll in NATO makes this graph misleading. For decades,
Europe has essentially had a subsidized military through alliance with the US.
They complain about increased US influence, but it's actually directly caused
by who is defending whom.

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lamnk
Isn't Europe helping out the US in Afghanistan ? Can you cite a source stating
that US is defending Europe ?

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ivankirigin
I'm told coordination efforts with, for example, inferior air forces, are
often more costly than doing it alone. Compare it to coordination efforts
between, say, Microsoft's marketting department and a local food blogger. They
don't operate using the same methods.

Ohh, and US defending Europe, the best example: the cold war. It was decades
of US military buildup largely to ensure they could invade or nuke eastern
Europe if they invaded first. South Korea is another example of a military
that is smaller because we keep a potential invader away.

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lamnk
It's true that US bases in Asia/Europe helped those countries in some ways.
However the intention of the US is not to defend them, it defends itself
first.

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gehant
There is no way China is only spending $85 billion. They've been fudging
numbers on military expenditures for years.

...apparently if we look the other way, it'll go away.

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halo
In the context of percentage of GDP per person then China is probably much
higher.

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eru
Percentage of GDP suffices. Otherwise you will be multiplying and dividing by
population.

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ntoshev
You can check the data for an arbitrary country in Wolfram Alpha:
[http://www61.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=israel+military+spend...](http://www61.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=israel+military+spending+/+israel+populaton)

The numbers are different because they are estimates, possibly from different
years. But is there a way to get the whole table of countries, sorted? I'm
interested in the rest of the countries as well.

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ComputerGuru
The best you can do is something like this:
[http://www61.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=israel+military+spend...](http://www61.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=israel+military+spending+%2F+israel+population%2C+us+military+spending%2Fus+population%2C+china+military+spending%2Fchina+population)

But the data is really inconsistent.. Different years for different countries,
different years for the population vs military numbers within countries, etc.

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dflock
This whole daily chart section of the economist is quite interesting, they've
got 500 other charts like that one in there:
<http://www.economist.com/daily/chartgallery/>

Like these interesting/surprising examples:

Countries with the most windpower generation in
GWs:[http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displays...](http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=7933596&story_id=13053467)

Public acceptance of evolution:
[http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displays...](http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=7933596&story_id=13062613)

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thomasfl
OMG! My friendly little country, Norway, is being ranked as number 7.

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radu_floricica
Isn't Norway selling a lot of weaponry? If the statistic only counts spending
and not loss/profit it would explain its presence in the top 10.

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holograham
The US number is misleading, many innovations come from military spending that
improve civilian life as well. i.e. the internet

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chanux
Without all that Sri Lanka finished war.

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TheSOB88
I see these all the time, but never a single "spenders by GDP" chart. What
gives? Seems like that info's more relevant anyways - how would they spend
money they don't have?

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ryanwaggoner
[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/rankorder/2034rank.html)

Googled military spending by GDP

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rfreytag
China spends more per dollar of GDP on the military - very interesting.

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yhnbgty
China'a GDP is a bit of an estimate. For any country with a large internal
market and a central government the GDP figure isn't very useful.

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rfreytag
You must be thinking of GNP which has been supplanted by GDP >precisely<
because it better reflects the product of a nation's internal and external
trade.

I think the CIA factbook probably does not totally rely on the PRC's reported
GDP (which I agree are likely suspect).

