According to IISS’s annual assessment of world-wide military capabilities and expenditures, Military Balance 2008, as the world gets richer more money is spent on defence. During times of economic prosperity it is easy to justify growing defence spending as GDP increases.
According to the heritage foundation, military spending as a percent of GDP reached a pinnacle during World War II at 34%. But right now the US spends just over 4% of GDP on defence. The percent increase President Bush asked for in this year’s budget comes to about 7.5%. Contrast this with increases of 20% and 25% year on year for China’s military spending. (Keep in mind even when you allow for the difficulty in summing up the true numbers there is still an order of magnitude difference in the billions spent by these countries.)
This amount of money gives the US a fair amount of breathing room to be creative and to try innovative methods to improve its defense technology, such as through the funding of groups like the Technical Support Working Group and DeVenCI.
Even with President Putin’s latest warning that a new arms race might break out and the dramatic increase in military spending by China is there a possibility for a dramatic uptick in percent spending for defence by the US? Excluding the significant unexpected event, unlikely. With the addition of a new administration heading to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave and the growth of entitlement programmes such as Medicare, Medicaid, and social security (numbers being thrown around suggest growth at the rate of up to 300% year on year) it’s very unlikely we’ll see a boost in the budget. It’s also unlikely we’ll see a dramatic decrease in spending. Even when we see a troop reduction in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US will replace and retool a lot of its equipment.
It appears that somewhere around 4% is the magic number that the US has found and it will be interesting to see how innovative the US will continue to be if forced to restrain its military outlay.
According to the heritage foundation, military spending as a percent of GDP reached a pinnacle during World War II at 34%. But right now the US spends just over 4% of GDP on defence. The percent increase President Bush asked for in this year’s budget comes to about 7.5%. Contrast this with increases of 20% and 25% year on year for China’s military spending. (Keep in mind even when you allow for the difficulty in summing up the true numbers there is still an order of magnitude difference in the billions spent by these countries.)
This amount of money gives the US a fair amount of breathing room to be creative and to try innovative methods to improve its defense technology, such as through the funding of groups like the Technical Support Working Group and DeVenCI.
Even with President Putin’s latest warning that a new arms race might break out and the dramatic increase in military spending by China is there a possibility for a dramatic uptick in percent spending for defence by the US? Excluding the significant unexpected event, unlikely. With the addition of a new administration heading to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave and the growth of entitlement programmes such as Medicare, Medicaid, and social security (numbers being thrown around suggest growth at the rate of up to 300% year on year) it’s very unlikely we’ll see a boost in the budget. It’s also unlikely we’ll see a dramatic decrease in spending. Even when we see a troop reduction in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US will replace and retool a lot of its equipment.
It appears that somewhere around 4% is the magic number that the US has found and it will be interesting to see how innovative the US will continue to be if forced to restrain its military outlay.
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