Interesting timing of the rise and fall of military spending in relation to wars and other events. Not taking into account the percentage of GDP that the amounts represent makes the data a little faulty. For example the U.S. and Russia were spending fairly close to the same amount of money on military spending right before the collapse of the Soviet Union but Russia was spending twice the percentage of GDP by many estimates which basically bankrupted them.
Ci
(2 votes)
Comments
(Site Administrator)
well, that didn't help france much.
(Long Spike)
saying the union collapsed because they were spending double the gdp on military is one way of looking at it.
another is. during the 70's, we had an energy crisis. in response the union becomes an oil producer. by the mid 80's, the demand for oil declines, the price of oil drops. oil producing countries stop producing to try and stabalize the price. president reagan makes a recommendation to saudi arabia to keep producing, saudi arabia goes into full production, price of oil went from 35 to 7$ a barrel. like 75 to 29$ in todays money.
(Long Spike)
It was definitely much more complicated than any one or two factors. It would just be interesting to also see the percentage of GDP and other factors as well as just military spending to get an idea what part of a nation's economy was dedicated to the military.
(Old Spike)
So much money to spend on "defense" just to be outclassed by Russia in the ways to defend the country from a real threat.