- The Strategist - https://www.aspistrategist.org.au -
Graph of the week: Comparative defence spending revisited
Posted By Kevin Atkinson on August 7, 2012 @ 10:30
One conclusion is perhaps unchanged, in that the defence posture of the countries has remained reasonably constant; however the view that Australia is investing much more intensively than its neighbours is tempered.
Even here we need to be careful when interpreting the results, as the process of correcting for the indigenous cost variation leads to an overestimation of the country’s ability to purchase imported high end military equipment from suppliers from advanced economies—an important consideration if what we are assessing is power projection capability. At the end of the day we can only draw limited conclusions from these sorts of comparisons. The fact that similar data can be presented in three very different sets of graphs demonstrates the care that needs to be taken in deciding what data to look at and what decisions can be reliably drawn from it.
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URL to article: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/graph-of-the-week-comparative-defence-spending-revisited/
[1] chart: http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/graph-of-the-week-in-defence-of-defence-cuts/
[2] BICC: http://www.bicc.de/old-site/
[3] GMIs over the same period: http://www.bicc.de/old-site/index.php?page=ranking-table
[4] Image: http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Proportion-of-total-GMI-Southeast-Asia2.png
[5] Image: http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Proportion-of-total-GMI-North-Asia1.png
[6] here: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/ICPINT/Resources/270056-1255977254560/6483625-1338834270350/FVogel_WhatisPurchasingPowerParity.pdf
[7] Image: http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Proportion-of-total-defence-budget-PPP-Southeast-Asia1.png
[8] Image: http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Proportion-of-total-defence-budget-PPP-North-Asia1.png