Go with a smile!

Saturday, May 01, 2010

Military Spending

I came across an article about military spending in nations across the world. Singapore is in the top 10 when it comes to military spending. Here are the top 10:

1. Myanmar (a military dictatorship, plus there are always minority insurgents to deal with)
2. Jordan (they're Israel's neighbour, and there's always trouble in the Middle East)
3. Georgia (they're fighting a war with Russia)
4. Saudi Arabia (they're in the Middle East and they have to deal with Iraq and Al Qaeda)
5. Kyrzystan (They're one of the smallest countries in Central Asia)
6. Burundi (They're neighbours with Rwanda and DRC, there's still plenty of fighting in DRC)
7. Oman (Militant Islam in Oman, Somali pirates)
8. USA (being a world empire is very expensive)
9. Singapore
10. Sri Lanka (Civil War)

As you can see, I've tried to come up with excuses for the top 10. If you have been following what's been going on in Kyrzystan, you might understand: a weak government has to defend itself. Plus they are surrounded by Russia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan so they have reason to be nervous. I cannot for the life of me think of excuses for Singapore. If you look at the spreadsheet, Singapore has an absolutely larger defence budget than Israel. WTF? Is it that everybody in Israel is on national service? Is it that Uncle Sam is paying for everything? Taiwan's military spending to GDP ratio is smaller than Singapore, even though they have to contend with China. Ditto South Korea, who has to deal with North Korea.

What the hell is going on?

Labels:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment