Military budgets

Of late, my idea of what it is appropriate for the UK to spend on its military has been drifting up. See, for example, reference 1.

Then yesterday I was struck by a piece in the Guardian by one Apostolis Fotiadis, a freelance journalist who works out of Athens, of whom I had not previously heard. See reference 2. Struck by the dominance of the US and by the relatively modest spend by Russia, maybe a tenth of that of the US.

Wikipedia as helpful as ever, with useful articles on military spending in the world in general and in Russia in particular. With a lot of its data coming from the respectable looking peace people at Stockholm. See reference 3. From whom Wikipedia took the chart left.

If we put the bar at 50 billion USD, we have USA, China, Saudi Arabia, India, France, Russia and UK, with us last just squeaking over the bar. So the USA and China between them dominate the world from both a commercial and military point of view, with the rest of us muddling along behind. That said, the Russian spend, a fraction of what it was in Soviet days, has climbed steadily from its low at the turn of the century. Furthermore, one can see the temptation for small, possibly rogue states, to take out some nuclear insurance, given that they cannot match the big boys in the ordinary way of things.

I dare say the people at Stockholm do their best, but it must be difficult to produce comparable figures.

What about the military-industrial complex, including all kinds of research and development? What about the nuclear industry in particular? What about the explosives industry? On which subject, I was told by a military gentleman, that we in the UK don't really have one any more. Come a shooting war, we might have problems on that front.

What about the various secret agencies? I learn from 'Central Government Supply Estimates 2019-20 Main Supply Estimates - May 2019 - HC 2154' that we spend around £3,162,228,000 a year on them, say 7.5% of what we spend on the military, for whom the comparable figure is £40,245,760,000.

How clear is the divide between military spending and spending on internal law and order? What about the increasing number of policemen who train like soldiers and dress like soldiers? What about the firemen, whom I remember from a visit to the Fire Service College to be part of the army in some countries?

What about bang for buck? Do the Saudi's succeed in buying military might with all their money? Does the UK make good use of its spend, by putting so much into a couple of aircraft carriers and a few large submarines?

So today's takeaway is that we should not overreact to the Russians, despite their penchant for fighting dirty. Nevertheless, we had probably better maintain our spending at about where it is.

PS: idle wonder. Are the French just like us, with their right wing pushing for lots of military - or are they still on the rebound from having (more or less) lost so many wars in the last couple of hundred years or so, starting with Waterloo?

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/11/politics.html.

Reference 2: https://apostolisfotiadis.wordpress.com/.

Reference 3: https://sipri.org/. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.