Mmmmmm

I think most relevant would be the numbers of active military units per (whatever) or simply full figures on foreign soil. But thanks nonetheless!

Eritrea is constantly on the brink of war with Ethiopia, with ongoing border disputes, so its high levels of active forces isn't really that surprising.

Nice to read something that doesn't abuse statistics once in a while. Cheers!

wow... thanks for this! I'm surprised Pakistan isn't anywhere in these lists... i would have thought that they are super militarised!

This is totally misleading.

Are you really saying that if the US was ten times as wealthy as it is, then it should have ten times the number of solidiers - 15 million???

And if it was two hundred times as wealthy then it should have 300 million soldiers??? (More than all the adults, children and babies in the US!)

Why should military spending be related to wealth? (Though it's a tragedy that poor countries often spend so much on killing people rather than giving them jobs, homes, etc.)

Totally misleading article.

@alan111d How would you prefer the analysis? Why do you find it surprising that countries spend more money on things when they are richer?

David McCandless provides the absolute figures, and links to the original data. This is clearly a very informative article. If you have some more enlightening visualisations, I would be very interested to see them.

Of Course there is one question that seems to be overlooked. This is whehter the risk of invasion or attack justify the levels of spending, at all. So unles the USA is prepparing to repell attacks from Canada (with thier evil socialist healthcare) Mexico (with their evil easily exploited labur) or Cuba (with their evil socialist healthcare and their even more evil insistance on mistreating the wrong victims, rahter than torturing the right victims) then al the numbers fail to add up on a matter of defence.

Hopalong,
The US military ensures the free flow of oil from the gulf. The US helps protect Japan/South Korea from North Korea. Two huge commitments...not to mention still having sizable forces in Europe.

@alan111d

That's a straw man argument, logically flawed. Of course you can't have more soldiers than population. Patently ridiculous.

And why should military spending be related to wealth?

Please correct me if I'm wrong but generally those with more money spend more and America has a lot more money than most.

Please try and keep up.

Note:

China plummets to a staggering 164th in the world league table.

should read

China plummets to a staggering 124th in the world league table.

In addition to what wersmall noted, we also protect Taiwan from mainland Chinese aggression, provide emergency services around the world (e.g. Tsunami relief, Haiti), patrol and protect shipping lanes, including off the horn of Africa, and attempt to enforce appropriate embargoes (e.g. North Korean nuclear technology/weapons).

Do the figures for China include the income the glorious PLA get from running fake goods factories and associated outlets? (An ingenious way of getting foreign subsidies for their military spending..)

At least in the US Army and Marines the largest line items in the budget are Payroll and Healthcare. It would probably be illuminating to compare spending with those removed since hardware costs don't change as much Payroll, Food and Housing do from country to country since Western Nations tend to spend much more per soldier.

Something else this doesn't mention is the percentage of the US military budget spent on research that then gets used by other countries' militaries, or the world at large in a non-military context. Think communications, medical tech, space technology, materials... I know other countries have their own R&D (esp. China, Russia, Israel) but it would be interesting to see a % breakdown of R&D versus total budget, and how much of that tech benefitted non-military society. Not sure what the measure would be there -- patents maybe?

Also, how much of that 600bn is spent on police-style actions and humanitarian missions compared to the same %s from other countries? For example how much of N. Korea's military budget is used for humanitarian or peacekeeping missions? Who gets called on most when there's a disaster? A breakdown of military budgets somehow compared to the number of troops sent in for disaster relief would be interesting.

Love the article, though -- it always infuriates me when I hear statistics being thrown around without any analysis to put it in context (e.g. "Movie X grossed the most money ever" without mentioning that ticket prices went up 50% since the last movie to set the record).

I am a bit perplexed as to how a country (USA) which is in debt to the tune of about $13 TRILLION could be considered wealthy??

In some ways US capabilities are even larger than the budget suggests because of the high technology. The Navy in particular is easily more capable than the rest of the word's navies put together.

@meljomur

You have to look at total existing assets, as well as potential assets, so long as we don't restrict all our future rights to our own resources, to wit, existing value of manufactured goods and knowledge, existing value of raw materials w/i our jurisdiction, and the multiplying effect of productive/efficient use of resources.

So, while the country is sporting a ridiculously high debt burden and a spiraling out of control deficit, there can be no doubt that we remain a rich country. Obviously, as with all things, that can change. (Also, "rich" is a somewhat relative term.)

Swillyboy

Do the figures for China include the income the glorious PLA get from running fake goods factories and associated outlets?

PLA run the factories? now thats something noone has ever heard before. when did you decide to make that up?

There are other things that bloat America's and many European military budgets that are less then Spartan. How much soldiers get paid, how much is spent on their health care, their housing, quality food, ext. In addition to being some of the best paid soldiers in the world, (though it is not enough) American troops also do their buying at the PX, where everything from Groceries to video games is discounted with government money,

Also America spends a lot on body armor, medical treatment, bomb detection, and various other things all designed to keep the number of wounded down. Comparing an American, or a Western military budget to a non-western one is just apples to oranges.

The Eritrea and Djibouti active forces per capita gains a little context when you realize the nations have, respectively, 5,673,520 and 864,000 people. Djibouti is smaller than most european or american cities. I would expect an inverse correlation between national population and active armed forces per capita due to some economies of scale and a relative lack of internal strife.

No more squares-with-rounded-corners-datablobs, please!

A redesign of the first two figures of this post: http://www.flickr.com/photos/polylemonade/4481999548/.

Bar charts might be old and boring but they are actually very powerful.

@alan111d

Your critique is totally misleading.

Nowhere in the article is the number of soldiers compared to the wealth of the nation. The only comparisons are of spending vs. wealth and soldiers vs. population.

The more appropriate question you should ask is, if the US were 10 times wealthier, would they spend 10 times as much on their military? It's not too far-fetched to believe they would.

$600b is a conservative estimate that does not take into account the money spread throughout other departments.

Regardless, the military budget is ~50% of our discretionary spending. As others have pointed out, much of this goes to the soldiers, sailors, and airmen through salary, health care, and educational benefits.

I think it is an absurd amount of money. While I cannot give you a figure I would be more comfortable with, since I'm not a defense specialist, I can tell you that in a time of economic crisis, failing schools, health care costs, and the need for sustainable growth spending 50% of your budget on the military just doesn't make sense.

I also think that we should discontinue the use of mercenaries. If our military can't do it, then we better find out how. Xe, Halliburton, KBR, etc, are all war profiteers. Mercenaries are dangerous not only to our finances (cost plus? who thought that was a good idea?) but also potentially to the nation's security itself.

Thats just me. Obviously, a lot of people think otherwise; else it would change.

Alan, Alan, Alan - "Why should military spending be related to wealth?" errrr many reasons - a) more to protect b) more R&D and less meat and potatoes c) etc etc

As always with statistics it shows something of a comparison but not the whole picture. (but at least they/he/she are showing their sources and methodolgy- which something more than most surveys) For instance you have to accept that any document made for public view is somewhat a public relations excercise and so probably does not represent the actual picture.

China troop levels are as much to reinforce the internal monotheistic political system as to combat an outside threat. If it came to the crunch it would be interesting to see what deployable levels would actually be whilst maintaing order. I imagine it would be harder for places like China to maintain order than somewhere like England or the US (although Id imagine they could have The Real Tea Party 2.0 - or The Real Tea Party: Live free and die for the Americans.)

It also goes to show that whilst everyone is bigging up China as the next 'Superpower' they have a hell of a way to go to match the US. Although this may be partly the reason for America's spending - fear...

Why has Israel been skipped off the list for military expenditure? CIA world factbook says it spends 7.3% of GDP putting it ahead of Oman and so in the top 10 of two categories.

Cormiac: 'Alan, Alan, Alan - "Why should military spending be related to wealth?" errrr many reasons - a) more to protect b) more R&D and less meat and potatoes c) etc etc'

This is the cost of inequality. If you have a lot and your neighbors don't, you have to spend more to protect what you have. Of course, you might instead invest in the well-being of your neighbors instead (God knows it would be cheaper than how we do it), but when you're scared, it's hard to see that. Them's the politics of fear.

And as for R&D, think of the portion of our best and brightest absorbed by that budget, and how much time they spend making sophisticated things that destroy themselves without producing continuing value. A cruise missile or a factory: which is the better investment?

Gotta end with Ike. He was the man:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Cormiac: 'Alan, Alan, Alan - "Why should military spending be related to wealth?" errrr many reasons - a) more to protect b) more R&D and less meat and potatoes c) etc etc'

This is the cost of inequality. If you have a lot and your neighbors don't, you have to spend more to protect what you have. Of course, you might instead invest in the well-being of your neighbors instead (God knows it would be cheaper than how we do it), but when you're scared, it's hard to see that. Them's the politics of fear.

And as for R&D, think of the portion of our best and brightest absorbed by that budget, and how much time they spend making sophisticated things that destroy themselves without producing continuing value. A cruise missile or a factory: which is the better investment?

Gotta end with Ike. He was the man:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

What you see is what you get
Youve made your bed, you better lie in it
You choose your leaders and place your trust
As their lies wash you down and their promises rust
You'll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns

And the public wants what the public gets
But I dont get what this society wants
- the Jam

As far as US presidents go IKE was one of the best. Given the some of the competition though.....

Let's also not forgot that one should normalize out how much of a country's defense budget is spend covering the butts of its allies. If Europe had to take care of its own defense, America would get to spend a lot less. I always find it obnoxious that the Europeans are so quick to criticize the US for spending so much when part of the reason we do is that we are the only ones giving NATO any teeth.

Second, one might also consider how much of that money is spent on non-military technology. You know the internet? The development of the internet was part of our Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. A lot of our budget goes to basic physics research that arguably has no direct application in killing people.

Granted, we should still spend less, but one number doesn't tell the whole story, normalized to GDP or not.

Alan111D

It is staggering how such a simple article, displaying statistics in their most simplest of forms, can be so grossly misunderstood.

@ElwoodB (good name BTW)
I said it wasn't telling the whole picture - this wasn't just meant negatively but positively as well.

It is during times of war when man(or women) pushes himself(or herself - this is starting to sound like Life of Brian!) to overcome problems and when often most techological progress is made. Look at the V5 and America's rocket technology! (Although given it was a race between America and Russia to see who could kidnap the most German scientists after WWII it may be disqualified....)

But on the same basis there will be hidden costs - undisclosed or unanticpated....financial or otherwise....if Oppenheimer had realised he would help kill 100,000-200,000 people would he have continued...although its hard to think he didn't have some idea as he quotes the Bhagavad-Gita - 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'

But then again he did say 'We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.' - oppenheimer never visited British Libel courts did he....

Among the many reasons why the US spends a disproportionate
amount of money on it's military, (compared to the number of
people, or the population of the country) is that we *HAVE* a lot
of money, and we *DON'T* have a lot of excess soldiers.

Yeah, a tank and crew cost in excess of 10 million, counting
training and supplies, but when we have to send them out,
we stand a fair chance of getting them back. And since they're
all (nominally) volunteers, that's an important consideration.

Also expense does not equal expertise. The US may have sqwished Saddam but the first troops into Iraq were the British - for the simple reason they are the best. The US also consistently sells more arms than anyone else too and so probably makes more money out of its investment too and a significant part of its money will be used to provide aid, support overseas troops and vehicles and other such logistical support.
from http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance8.html
This means that the United States has troops in 70 percent of the world?s countries. The average American could probably not locate half of these 135 countries on a map....This means that 17.6 percent of U.S. military forces were deployed on foreign soil, and certainly over 25 percent if U.S. troops in Iraq from the United States were included....The U. S. global empire ? an empire that Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus, Genghis Khan, Suleiman the Magnificent, Justinian, and King George V would be proud of.(although he fails to mention Darius of Persia who had 44% of the worlds population under sway at one point)

The US Defense budget in 2009 the defense budget was $651.2 billion. Military spending was $1.16 trillion. That still doesn't include non-military defense spending such as Department of Homeland Security, Veteran's Affairs, FBI counter-terrorist spending, NASA intelligence, etc. It's well over 8% of the GDP, making the US ranking 3rd - behind a military dictatorship and a country whose giant military is largely the result of US backing.

As for troop numbers, that hardly makes the US less of an "aggressive, war-mongering military machine obsessed with spending on defence and plumping up its armed forces." Actions speak louder than numbers, and a country with a defense budget that has doubled in 8 years, that hides most of its military spending in other departments and with supplements outside the federal budget, that led an invasion without UN consent and has been pursuing that illegal war for 7 years, and that will owe another $1 trillion in indirect expenses from that war... sounds pretty war-mongering and obsessed with defense spending to me.

Excellent article.

Alan111d, as others have said, you have totally misunderstood the article. Nowhere does it relate wealth to troop numbers.

As for why spending should be proportional to wealth, it's not because rich countries have more to protect. It's partly because major costs like soldiers wages, pentions and healthcare are higher and partly because they have more money available (in the same way that someone with more money is more likely to have a nicer car).

You put in Cyprus,Israel and North Korea, it would have been nice if you had included Finland.

Thanks all for great comments and extra data. I've gotten hold of the figures for FY2009 now. So I hope to amend this shortly. Much appreciated! David

It seems that the US personnel figures are incomplete without including data on hired mercenaries ....any stats on how many mercenaries are currently employed by the US military?

The graphics tell a great story.

I was surprised to see Canada (domain name CA) in the U.S. military budget graphics but then I realized you must have met China (domain name CN).