Useful Facts: Armed Forces
The latest installment of “Useful Facts” (note: by popular demand, we changed the name from “Useless Facts” — we’ll leave it to you to judge whether they are useful or useless)…
Total Armed Forces
|
REGULARS |
RESERVES |
| 1. China |
2,255,000 |
800,000 |
| 2. United States |
1,433,000 |
1,140,000 |
| 3. India |
1,325,000 |
1,155,000 |
| 4. North Korea |
1,106,000 |
4,700,000 |
| 5. Russia |
1,037,000 |
20,000,000 |
| 6. South Korea |
687,000 |
4,500,000 |
| 7. Pakistan |
619,000 |
513,000 |
| 8. Turkey |
514,000 |
378,000 |
| 9. Vietnam |
484,000 |
4,000,000 |
| 10. Egypt |
468,000 |
479,000 |
| Canada |
64,000 |
27,500 |
Useless Facts: Military Spending
Today, we learn that Canada’s PM Stephen Harper is applying diplomatic pressure on North Korea to ease off developing its nuclear weapons program. In honour of this, we present today’s Useless Facts TM.
TOP DEFENSE SPENDING
(as % of GDP)
| 1. North Korea |
25.0% |
| 2. Oman |
10.0% |
| 3. Eritrea |
9.2% |
| 4. Myanmar |
9.0% |
| 5. Saudi Arabia |
8.8% |
| 6. Israel |
8.2% |
| 7. Jordan |
7.9% |
| 8. Kuwait |
7.8% |
| 9. Syria |
7.4% |
| 10. Qatar |
7.2% |
| 28. United States |
3.8% |
| 128. Canada |
1.1% |
From the looks of the top 10, it would appear that large military spending doesn’t guarantee security (of course, it is also true that lack of security motivates military spending…).
