Hacker News Reader

Comment by nanna | Hacker News Reader

SIPRI's top ten military spenders 2021, with help from Wikipedia [0]

  1. USA: $801 billion
  2. China: $293 billion
  3. India: $76.6 billion
  4. UK: $68.4 billion
  5. Russia: $65.9 billion
  6. France:  $56.6 billion
  7. Germany: $56.0 billion
  8. Saudia Arabia: $55.6 billion
  9. Japan: $54.1 billion
  10. S. Korea: $50.2 billion

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

View on HN

So rough math shows that the US spends more on military than the next 10 countries put together. Or put another way, spends 40% of all world military spending.

While I get that military R&D occasionally produces tangible benefits to society, I suspect that if we poured 5% of the military budget into the state department and actually tried diplomacy more often, the rest of the military budget could get cut at least in half.

Because of the level of corruption and the amount of money to be made by military contractor grifters, this isn't going to change. Better to build better ways to kill people than to solve things like poverty, mass mental illness and so on. 'merica fuck yeah and all that.

Interesting. Can you describe a scenario where western diplomacy would have prevented the current situation in Ukraine? We can assume that the State Department's budget was any number you like in our example.

Linear thinking .. like let us spend the money from military to diplomatic and civilian aid, sounds great, until you see and understand how the fiefdoms of State department and USAID are built and operated.

We have State department and CIA full of people who cannot speak a second language, let alone the native language of country where they are stationed. End up living in a bubble that feels like a Western enclave -- too far from realities of the people of those countries.

I would rather have corrupt hard power instead of feel good fake soft power.

Same colonial empire building, new branding

US offers defense guarantees, weapons and munitions to many nations in exchange for soft power. Approx $120B/year in sales alone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_pact

I find the per-capita military spending very interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

1 USA 3806.4 2020 Estimate[3]

2 Israel 2507.6 2020 Precise

3 UAE 2020.4 2020 Estimate[2]

4 Singapore 1855.5 2020 Precise

5 Saudi Arabia 1652.2 2020 Estimate

6 Kuwait 1625.3 2020 Precise

7 Oman 1317.8 2020 Estimate

8 Norway 1312.0 2020 Precise

9 Australia 1079.9 2020 Precise

10 Qatar 1011.0 2010 Precise

I can understand Singapore needing to protect itself against aggressive neighbours and all the Middle Eastern countries (including Israel). But Australia, who are they planning to fight? Timor? Papua?

Australia plans to fight China.

Australia plans to defend itself in case one of the Chinas attacks. The one that's neither people's nor a republic, despite calling itself so.

> Australia plans to defend itself in case one of the Chinas attacks.

I'm not sure I find that very plausible. Especially when I find out about stuff like this where Australia has been extracting resources from its smaller powerless neighbors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%E2%80%93East_Timor_s...

The Australia–East Timor spying scandal began in 2004 when the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) clandestinely planted covert listening devices in a room adjacent to the East Timor (Timor-Leste) Prime Minister's Office at Dili, to obtain information in order to ensure Australia held the upper hand in negotiations with East Timor over the rich oil and gas fields in the Timor Gap.[1] Even though the East Timor government was unaware of the espionage operation undertaken by Australia, negotiations were hostile. The first Prime Minister of East Timor, Mari Alkatiri, bluntly accused the Howard Government of plundering the oil and gas in the Timor Sea, stating:

    "Timor-Leste loses $1 million a day due to Australia's unlawful exploitation of resources in the disputed area. Timor-Leste cannot be deprived of its rights or territory because of a crime."[2]

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/25/989546260/i-remember-them-scr...

'I Remember Them Screaming': Afghans Detail Alleged Killings By Australian Military

Not sure how a minor oil fields dispute ought to modify in any way my original belief that Australia plans to defend itself against the PRC.

It appears to me that Australia is using its "defense" budget to fund offensive actions against weaker neighbors like Timor in order to steal billions of dollars worth of petro-resources. That's not a "minor" thing. Bugging a Prime Ministers Office in another country can't have been cheap. That's probably a couple of million dollars just on that operation.

The scale of this problem, and this offence, seems so vastly different from the potential catastrophe that the PRC would wreak on all these countries and their neighbours if they're allowed to operate unchallenged in the South Pacific that, again, it just seems like a footnote to the real story.

Australia is in a very tight spot with China. And China is now in a security pact with the Solomon Islands which will give China the ability to blockade Australia (and New Zealand) from the United States in the event of war.

* edit * the reason this is significant is because: When China goes to take back Taiwan, the United States will need to be able to use Australia as a major logistics hub. Any inability to do so will significantly hamper, delay, or prevent aid to Taiwan.

China doesn't have a blue water navy and won't have the ability to reasonably attempt to blockade the US for at least another decade.

>>>China doesn't have a blue water navy

It's got the ships, it just doesn't have the overseas bases. It is entirely based in semi-constrained waters. The issue with the Solomons is so concerning because, much like their plans for Gwadar Port in Pakistan, it would enable the PLAN to base significant forces outside the First and Second Island Chains.

https://www.dw.com/en/china-navy-vs-us-navy/a-55347120

https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/documents/Koda_BWN.p...

I think the real issue is an issue of priorities. You don't even have to compare the US to other countries but compare the US to ourselves. Approximately half of our total spending goes to our military budget[1], and we complain about spending on social programs and college funding, having people "pull themselves up by their bootstraps".

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2021/04/09/biden-202...

Who is us?

Whoops... forgot caps. Was supposed to be the US. I'll fix it. I'm doing this while I get my caffeine ready =[

We're #1

Half of Discretionary spending which does not include Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Oh, to be honest I'm not sure how that works. Discretionary spending makes it sound like it's just pocket money. 1.5 trillion dollars doesn't sound like pocket money, and this is the budget that all of the news outlets seem to discuss as "the budget"... what's the other budget that social security, medicare and medicaid come out of so that I can look up that spending and what comes out of that and how much that is? - this seems purposefully complicated, tbh. I've heard this referred to as "the federal budget" for so long (and yes, I'm referring to the US federal budget), I thought they were referring to the complete budget (state budgets aside). That being said, I do understand my naivete =/

EDIT... I meant to say thank you in that post. that chart is awesome, btw

> Discretionary spending makes it sound like it's just pocket money.

It doesn't, really. "Discretionary spending" has a specific meaning, it's not just a casual choice of words.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_Sta...

That’s just discretionary spending. Discretionary spending is less than half of total US federal spending. The biggest single expense budgets by far are welfare or welfare related.

https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spend...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com