israel the most militaristic country...

its official israel is the most militaristic counrty in the world.
closely followed by singapore? and the US.

its no wonder they need all those weapons, the palestinean rock technology is really advancing, with some cads able to throw two at a time!!!

heres the link for the vital statistics
www.nationmaster.com...

what opinions do folk have, are they surprised to see the chinese all the way down near the bottom.

and what the hell is new caledonia doing up there.

your comments please!

if these results are true they are shocking

if these results are false, what are they? propaganda? test if we are stupid? lol

i dont know what to believe.

Personally, I don't see the issue with a militaristic society or country.
Israel is obviously picked and ranked as high because..........
Singapore? Hmm, Not sure on this unless its because of internal problems.
The US? I wonder why also........

Again, I'm not seeing an issue or a point to this. Help me out....



seekerof

well, why is a country like singapore spending so much money (comparatively) than the US. what goals does it have in mind. is it expecting some sort of need for this spending? i know that it is currently looking at buying a next gen fighter (eurofighter, rafale, gripen are all candidates). its just interesting to see which countries would rather spend more of their gdp per capita on their military rather than health or education or whatever. israel is somewhat understandable, but singapore, benin, new caledonia????

According to the CIA factbook the title belongs to the DPRK (North Korea)

Originally posted by ignorance is a plenty
According to the CIA factbook the title belongs to the DPRK (North Korea)

Hmmm, with a GNP half that of New Hampshires but 27 times the population? Hard to believe.

It's not shocking at all actually. In fact it's pretty logical.

See the spending is Per Person, so logically smaller countries that still have sizable militaries (like Singapore) are near the top because they don't have as many people to spread the cost among while the really giant nations (like China and India) are near the bottom because while they have huge militaries they have over a billion people to spread the cost over.

The US is, of course, near the top, and so is Israel. The US has the world's most powerful military and only 300 million people to spread the cost over. Israel, well they have their own issues. I'll be the first to admit that pretty much every single Islamic terrorist would like nothing more than to see Israel blown away, and they should have a decient military to deal with it, but like mpcsmith7 said, they also feel they need attack helicopters to fight kids with rocks.

Also this is not at an economic measure, GNP and GDP have nothing to do with it. This is a measure of military spending per capita, (could be debit spending as it mostly is with the US) so the North Koreans (I refuse to call them the DPRK because it's an insult to the word democratic) could be very highly ranked as well. My bet is that they didn't make this list because of the problems getting any kind of statistics on North Korea these days.

Anyhow,

May Peace Travel With You
~Astral

i understand now. thanks for the little lecture. im not shocked anymore!

I agree with the figures but not the words used to describe the issue.
When I think of a "militaristic country" I generally think of more than just expenditures per person - I also think of how much the military permeates society.
So regarding the US under this criteria the US is not very militaristic. We don/t have soldiers on every street corner, (unless you live a town with a military base) - compare that to say, Pyong Yang, North Korea.
The US does not have huge military parades like the old Soviet Union, or Saddam's pre-invasion Iraq, etc.

The US may very well be number 3 in the world in military spending per person - but somehow equating that to being a "militaristic" country is just misleading semantics.

No doubt those outside the US and who only hear about wars etc have a differing view and thats ok.

[edit on 28-10-2004 by bios]

Singapore is worried about Malaysia I think, some water dispute...

plus the malacca straits msut be guarded from pirates and terrorists. It is the most valuable water channel in the world w.r.t. trade...

its no wonder they need all those weapons, the palestinean rock technology is really advancing, with some cads able to throw two at a time!!!

Maybe if I was surrounded by a bunch of people who wanted to wipe ME off the face of the map, I'd be armed to the teeth as well! Isreal has a long history (even recent times) of being attacked by many of it's neighbors, and often in concert...

I would like to point out that Isreal is at war state all the time, it has 2 years military service to all boys and girls of age 18-21(Singapore has 2,5 years military service), so no wonder why huge amount of GNP is used for military, still GNP isnt reliable cause countrys got different living levels, for example if average american get $3000 month, average chinese get $300 so to maintain military in china you wont need so much money for it, that reflect everything. to look only GNP of country is false.

Originally posted by Observer83
I would like to point out that Isreal is at war state all the time, it has 2 years military service to all boys and girls of age 18-21(Singapore has 2,5 years military service), so no wonder why huge amount of GNP is used for military, still GNP isnt reliable cause countrys got different living levels, for example if average american get $3000 month, average chinese get $300 so to maintain military in china you wont need so much money for it, that reflect everything. to look only GNP of country is false.

Its 3 years for boys, and 2 for girls. In some units you must sign for more years (depending on the unit).