Defence Spending - NATO and Others

Selected countries:



NATO members (actual spending then as a % of GDP):



The goal of making defence spending a certain % of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is criticised here:

https://www.pogo.org/investigation/2012/10/budget-and-hardware-myths-part-i/  Excerpt:

What these people are trying to say is that the defense budget should comprise a certain percentage of the nation’s wealth and that because we spent at the rate of a larger percentage in the past, such as the Cold War, we should spend more now.

They will not say so but apparently they also believe that the defense budget should correspond to the number of U.S. McDonald hamburger drive-ins (that have also grown along with the nation’s economy). They have stolen an economist’s pedantic measure of proportionate spending to argue what the size of the defense budget should be. It is completely independent of external conditions, and it ignores what efficiency may or may not exist in actual spending. It is complete nonsense; it defines bombast masquerading as analysis.

. . . High tech, and even more so money, is no guarantee of success. If spending were the key to success, the British would have won our Revolutionary War, the Germans would have lost in France in 1940, the U.S. would have won in Vietnam, and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would not have been the disaster they are.

There is a corollary to the postulate that more money does not guarantee a better overall defense; it is that expense and high tech in specific equipment also does not guarantee success—to be discussed in our second piece. In the meantime, our political-military leaders are dedicated to the proposition that the amount of money equates to the amount of defense. Our defense leaders are a long way from believing anything different.

It's weird that Saudi Arabia is so high.

Also, the insanely high amount of money that the US pays into NATO is one of the reasons that many of us want to get out in the first place. The Cold War is over, so we should disband it.

Trump was entirely justified when he said the other NATO members should pay more for defence. Britain just about meets its commitment but, as a % of GDP, we are spending only half as much on defence as we were during the Cold War. A committee recently advised the Government to increase it to 3% but I doubt they will.

If the US suddenly withdrew from NATO it would leave the European members vulnerable to Russia, but if done gradually we could build up enough to deter them. There are some opinions here on the matter:
https://www.quora.com/Do-you-agree-with-President-Trump-Should-the-United-States-of-America-withdraw-from-NATO