On America's Military Expenditure: Responding to Fareed Zakaria GPS
Fareer Zakaria puts a question on American Military expenditure in his very popular Fareed Zakaria GPS programme: Should the America reduce its military expenditure, currently at $651 billion? The logic is that this is way out of proportion with the comparable big power states, and should the nation keep spending as much money as it does. This is a loaded question and will indeed draw a lot of responses. I have my views too, but since I am not an American, I chose to reflect about this here rather than writing back to CNN. Let us start with how much America really spends on Military. This information is available at various places on the web, but I shall just compile this together here. First, a list of military expenditure by states reveal how much more America spends on Armed Forces. Here are some key statistics. United States spends $651 Billion out of the total reported global expenditure of $1470 Billion, or roughly 44% of the total. Interestingly, total NATO expenditure on mi...