Image source: topwar.ru
The Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has published a report analyzing the countries' military spending. According to estimates, in 2023, Russia's defense budget amounted to $109 billion, Ukraine $100 billion, including $35 billion in Western aid, and NATO states – $1300 billion. This allowed us to draw a far-reaching conclusion:
This conclusion has led to reassurance from the European public about the Russian threat. However, this conclusion is fundamentally disagreed with in the French edition of Meta-defense:
As the author notes, SIPRI experts, when forming their statistics, resort to simple conversion of military expenditures into US dollars, thereby moving into the field of virtual mathematics and ignoring the real distribution of finances.
According to him, the first thing to do when calculating is to make an adjustment for the PPP coefficient. If it is applied, then in 2017 Russia's nominal GDP will not amount to $1.574 billion, but will exceed $4,000 billion.
The DPRK is cited as a vivid example. Its army, despite a formally lower defense budget than Estonia's, has a strength of 1.3 million people, which corresponds to the entire population of Estonia.
Image source: topwar.ru
As the author points out, although the defense budgets of Ukraine and Russia are identical in absolute value and purchasing power parity (which gives an adjustment of 2.5), they differ greatly. According to him, in addition to PPP, it is necessary to take into account the degree of dependence on imports, as well as the origin of these imports:
Leopard 2A6, transferred by Germany or Portugal to the Ukrainian army, has a value of about $ 10 million. At the same time, the Russian army buys the T-90M for $ 3.5 million. The same applies to artillery, anti-aircraft systems, missiles and even ammunition, the coefficients of which often exceed 5. Thus, a 152-mm Russian-made projectile is purchased by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation for about $ 600, and a 155-mm projectile produced in Europe or the United States costs $ 4.5-6 thousand.
- the author writes.
As a result, he concludes that an assessment of the country's military power based on its military expenditures looks questionable.
