The cost of carrying a big stick

Just read a revealing, if not that surprising, analysis of defence spend by country. The land of the free spends 3 times more than the next highest spending country (China) and more than the total spend of the next 10 countries in the list. We are always hearing about the parlous state of our nation's defences, but our spend comes in 3rd. Despite all Russia's sabre wielding (well, they've done a bit more than rattle sabres recently, haven't they?) the Russian defence spend was cut in 2016 after nearly 2 decades of annual increases. The cuts mainly fell on the navy which, looking at the state of the ships that sailed through the channel to the Med recently, isn't a great surprise. The only really big surprise to me in the list was that our defence spend is more than Russia's, though I expect the cash goes a lot further in terms of paying an army of Russians.

The security climate has led to most countries increasing spend lately, with Italy being a notable exception. Lots of countries spend around £10bn a year - a quarter of our spend - as do Israel, though in their case that's over 5% of gdp. Which is tiny compared with Saudi Arabia's remarkable 14%. Of course, it's expensive maintaining order in an autocratic country and playing both sides by helping anti-insurgency efforts in some countries while waging proxy puppeteering wars in others, as noted by Boris Johnson.

Here's the top 20 for you to browse for yourself:

Rank	Country	Spend  (£bn)	Notes
1	USA	489.2	>3% of gdp
2	China	150.8	+43% in 5yrs, £196bn by 2020
3	UK	42.3	2% of gdp
4	India	39.8	Into the top 5 for the first time
5	Saudi Arabia	38.2	13.9% of gdp
6	Russia	38	Cut 5% in last year after increases every year since 1998
7	France	34.8	Increasing in 2017
8	Japan	32.7	Increased in 2016
9	Germany	28	Planning first army expansion since cold war
10	South Korea	26.3	Further increases planned to 2020
11	Australia	21	1.9% of gdp
12	Italy	18.1	1.3% of gdp. Cut recently
13	Brazil	18	1.5% gdp. Much on border drug control
14	UAE	14.9	Contributing to anti-Islamist operations
15	Canada	11	<1% of gdp
16	Israel	10.9	5.4% of gdp (peaked at  24% in 1980s)
17	Taiwan	10.8	Pressure from USA to spend more
18	Turkey	10	Recently increased spend by 20%
19	Spain	9.3	Increased in 2015 after 6 years of cuts
20	Algeria	8.3	Defence spend doubled 2004-2014 following civil war

I saw the analysis on MSN's newsfeed but of course it comes from the well known publication Jane's. The spoon fed version is at

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/news/the-worlds-most-expensive-armed-forces/ss-BBwp8gO?ocid=spartanntp#image=1

Jane's say that spending on weapons and equipment rose in 2016 to a global total of $1.57 trillion (i.e. million million, equal to £1.24 trillion). To put that in context, it's a lot more than twice the size of the global market for all beers, which is expected to reach $689 bn by 2020. No wonder countries like selling arms and arms sellers like Saudi Arabia.