Our Lavish Defense Budget

Via Judd Legum, the latest on American military spending in global perspective:

Part of what I think is interesting here is the non-US aspects. If you leave us out of it, you’ll nevertheless see that spending by our treaty allies in NATO, Japan, and South Korea dwarfs spending by China and Russia to say nothing of “rogue states” like Iran to say nothing of shoestring operations like the Taliban. Under the circumstances, the fact that we account for such a large share of world defense spending is difficult to account for. And given that the US share of global economic output is extremely likely to shrink over the next 15 years, we’re not going to be able to sustain this kind of hegemonic posture without really crippling the domestic economy.