Defending Against What?

 The budget recently proposed by George W.
Bush has clear winners and losers. The big
winner is defense, while the losers are
education, the environment, and social programs.
Mr. Bush will claim that increases in defense
spending are necessary to protect the American
people. But how does our defense budget compare
with other countries? How much do other countries
spend on their militaries? How much do we need to
defend against those who would be hostile to the
United States?

I will compare the US military budget with those
of other nations, so we can see where we stand
in our ability to defend against attack. All
figures given here are from the US CIA, and are
the latest figures available on their website.
Figures for the US are from March, 2003, others
are generally from 2003 or 2002, a few are from
2001, and a few are estimated. For whatever
reason, the military budget figures for Russia
are not available on the CIA's website;
estimates from other sources are approximately
12.3 billion dollars in 2003.

According to CIA figures, US military
expenditures for 2003 totaled 370.7 billion
dollars. So how does the 370.7 billion dollars
the US spent on its military compare with the
military budgets of other nations?

Using the latest figures available from the
CIA, the country with the next highest
military expenditures, after the US, is China
at 60 billion dollars. The US military budget
is more than 6 times that of our nearest competitor.

    After the US, the next 15 countries on the list are:


1.    China                  60 billion dollars
2.    France                 45.2 billion dollars
3.    United Kingdom         42.8 billion dollars
4.    Japan                  42.5 billion dollars
5.    Germany                35 billion dollars
6.    Italy                  28.2 billion dollars
7.    Saudi Arabia           18 billion dollars
8.    South Korea            14.5 billion dollars
9.    Australia              14.1 billion dollars
10.   India                  14 billion dollars
11.   Russia                 12.3 billion dollars
12.   Turkey                 12.2 billion dollars
13.   Brazil                 10.4 billion dollars
14.   Spain                   9.9 billion dollars
15.   Canada                  9.8 billion dollars

    Total                   368.9 billion dollars


The military budgets of these 15 countries total
368.9 billion dollars, just under the 370.7
billion dollars the US spent on its military.
The US spends more on "defense" than the next
15 nations combined! Most of these countries
are generally considered to be "friends" or
"allies" of the US, and certainly not someone
who we need to defend ourselves against.
Looking at it another way, military expenditures
for the entire world total 883.2 billion dollars.
The US military budget, at 370.7 billion dollars,
is 42% of the entire world's military budget.
One has to wonder, just what exactly is it we
are "defending" against?

    The nations Bush declared to be the "Axis
of Evil", Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, have
military budgets of:

  Iraq                   1.3 billion dollars  (2000)
  Iran                   4.3 billion dollars
  North Korea            5.2 billion dollars

  Total                  10.8 billion dollars

    The US military budget exceeds the total
military expenditures of the "Axis of Evil"
nations by a factor of 34.

The US military budget for 2005 is approximately
400 billion dollars, plus an additional
"supplementary appropriation" of an estimated
80 to 100 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, and an additional 30.5
billion dollars for "domestic security",
totaling over 500 billion dollars.

Since we clearly spend more than enough on our
military to defend against attack from other
nations (although perhaps not enough for
military adventures into countries who have
neither the intention nor the ability to
attack us, but do have large quantities of
oil), it seems to me that we could spend a
much smaller portion of our tax dollars on
the military, leaving more money for education,
environmental protections, health care,
development of alternative energy sources,
and so on. We might even consider spending a
little on our neighbors in the world who are
less fortunate than ourselves. And wouldn't
a safe, healthy and well educated population,
and a world no longer filled with starving
people be the best defense of all?