Saturday, February 07, 2009
My post on surging army recruitment seems to have gotten a lot of attention (though I'm not sure anyone got or liked my "surge" pun). I thought people who are thinking about modern military policy might also be interested in this table of military expenditures per capita by nation. The United States is not, as many would predict, first. It's third. #1 is predictable, but #2 surprised me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Singapore makes total sense. They have mandatory 2-year military commitments for every male citizen. Singapore also invests heavily in training for these individuals - and housing costs are high because of relatively expensive local real estate.
One thing to note about that chart is that it tends to leave out non-monetary costs of maintaining a military. (Quasi)-Communist countries like the PRC and North Korea may have low expenditures per capita, but that's relatively misleading about the overall impact of the military on their economies. North Korea, in particular, has almost nothing in the way of hard-currency, so they can't spend very much, but are basically a nation in arms. The PRC is the same by a lesser degree, but still has a massive standing military. I don't know how to measure it, but it's worth mentioning.
Post a Comment