Reply #12: Heh heh, sorry, I was being flip

[Psephos]

Meanwhile, you're right, defense is about half of the US discretionary budget.

I think percentage of GDP is a better measure of national commitment to defense. The US has averaged around 4 or 5 percent for a long time (i.e., the past thirty years). It was a higher percentage before that. Current expenditures (outside of special appropriations for war) are in the middle of the 30-year trendline.

Some poorer countries with a militaristic national agenda spend a higher percentage of their GDP on defense (the old USSR was a classic example, at something like 15% or even more - and look what it got them). The social Western democracies spend considerably less.

The entire world expenditure for defense is about $1 trillion annually, which works out to about 2.5% of world GDP. The 15 countries with the highest spending account for 84 per cent of the total. US is responsible for 48 per cent of the world total, followed by UK, France, Japan and China with 4–5 percent each. India and China are, in relative terms, growing more rapidly in their outlays than other countries.

Interesting factoid: US defense outlays are almost 30 times greater than the combined outlays of the six "rogue" states (Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela). BTW, that's not my rogue list. ;-)

Here are the raw historical figures for the US:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/pdf/hist.pdf