Who, where, how much, and why?

This report, put together by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute lists the countries with the highest military expenditure around the world. The United States leads the chart with $611.2 billion, followed by China ($215.7 billion) and Russia ($69.2 billion). Saudi Arabia is the only representative from the Middle East in the top 10 (#4 with $63.7 billion).

Of the top twelve countries in the list, half are clearly Western: The United States, France (#5 with $55.7 billion), the United Kingdom (#6 with 48.3 billion), Germany (#9 with 41.1 billion), Italy (#11 with $36.8 billion), and Australia (#12 with $24.3 billion). The US allies Japan (#8 with $46.1 billion) and South Korea (#10 with $36.8 billion) could be considered in the same group (depending on the definition of ‘the West’).

Data from SIPRI, Image credit: https://twitter.com/conradhackett/status/857224002749816834

For each country, the report also calculates military expenditure as percentage of GDP, but this captures only part of the picture. Military expenditure is generally decided upon by policy makers in government institutions, and is one of the budget items that compete with a long list of other potential expenses such as domestic infrastructure, education, healthcare, and international humanitarian aid. In this context it becomes clear that military expenditure must be placed on the domestic priority list of a country, and therefore we should examine its proportion to a country’s overall budget as well.

Among the major players in the Middle East — one of this blog’s chief interests — the United States military expenses were thus actually 15.2% of the country’s budget for 2016 ($3.999 trillion). Russia’s expenses were higher at around 19.2% (3.07 trillion rubles out of about 16 trillion rubles). Saudi Arabia planned to spend over a quarter of its budget on “military sectors” over the same year (213 of 840 billion rials). Iran’s military expenses were $12.685 billion in 2016, about 15.7% of its overall expenses ($80.58 billion). Israel’s military expenses were $18 billion out of a budget of $108.6 billion, or 16.5%, although it also receives an average of $3.8 billion in US military aid every year (maps of US foreign aid here).

It goes without saying that the real expenses are higher than the approved budget, and that additional items related to defense and military expenditure are “hidden” in other sections in the budget, often for security and political reasons (e.g. for Iran see p. 1 of the report here which claims that the Revolutionary Guard funding is roughly equivalent to the country’s entire defense budget; for Israel see here).

However one calculates the numbers, others have already pointed out that these figures are astronomical. For a few quick comparisons, the price for a permanent colony on Mars would be around $50–150 billion over ten years. Another Burg Khalifa (the tallest building in the world) would be only $1.5 billion (in 2010 dollars). The fastest train, the Shanghai Maglev train, came with a similar price tag of $1.2 billion (in 2005 dollars). Harmony of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world that can accommodate up to 9,000 guests and staff, has a similar cost of only $1.35 billion.

These expenses lead us to ask several questions, which we’ll treat separately below.

First, are these high military budgets justified? Naturally, every government needs to justify its expenses to someone, whether its electorate, its elite, or the local autocrat. It is, however, very easy to justify military expenses. Consider the top 10 countries on the list of military expenditure above. Do countries such as the UK or France, both in peaceful northwestern Europe and with no obvious enemies, really need such high military budgets to defend themselves? The UK, for example, is below its target strength and has only 77,440 soldiers in its Army.

Most of us can’t really answer these questions because the information that is required to do so responsibly is not accessible, and we generally have to take the word of “experts” who know better. There are enough experts, however, who pointed out that the entire defense industry is a racket. As US General Douglas MacArthur pointed out, already in 1957:

“Our swollen budgets constantly have been misrepresented to the public. Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.”

The same words remain relevant today. Instead of simply buying defense, certain countries use their military budgets to ‘buy’ regional and international influence. This could be done by sponsoring ‘military exercises’ with allies, exercises that can presumably cost tens of millions of dollars.

It could also be spent on maintaining bases overseas to preserve international points of influence. Such bases are rarely only places where one country stores troops, ammunition and facilities. Instead, bases allow the country an on the ground presence and localized knowledge about events, while also giving it more opportunities to project its force in the region (e.g. the Russian base in Crimea that facilitated its annexation, or the new large Turkish base in Somalia). Keeping such bases establishes power relations between the country who owns the base and the one on whose land the base is. Again, data is difficult to compile for obvious reasons. Estimates place the number of US bases around the world at around 800 in 80 countries, or “military presence” (a vague term) in over 1,000 locations in 172 countries. Estimates for the costs of the bases/military presence have ranged between $85–200 billion for 2015. In Germany alone the US continues to maintain more than 30 bases with more than 36,000 soldiers (and has closed over 200[!] installations since World War II).