>2% spending on military matters for NATO is considered a lot
How much did countries prior to WWI and WWII spend? How much did they spend in the 1800s?
>2% spending on military matters for NATO is considered a lot
>2% spending on military matters for NATO is considered a lot
How much did countries prior to WWI and WWII spend? How much did they spend in the 1800s?
Kings of England would regularly bankrupt themselves invading France after only a few years.
That's amatuer stuff.
The medieval kings of Denmark put into system to mortage away the incomes from their holdings to raise money for mercenaries, often take back castles from previous creditors.
This debt trap reached it's natural conculsion when Christopher II mortaged away the entire country to a pair of Holsteinian counts and the kingdom of Dernmark for all intents and purposes ceased to exist for a short period of time. The Germans weren't really interested in ruling Denmark as much as squeezing as much money as possible out of it and for an example sold off Scania to the Sweidsh king at the time for an obscene sum.
It's not really comparable. They didn't keep standing armies.
Pre-modern GDP needs to be looked at in relative terms. Global trade and finance - which makes up huge amounts of GDP, whatever you think about it - were nowhere near the level they are today. So 2% of an average European country's budget may have been 50% of a 19th century country's budget.
At the peak of the cold war, america spent an annual of 10-15% of their GDP for the military. If we apply that for today's economy. America will be spending like an annual 2 trillion dollars per year at the very least.
Good old times, today's US military spending is lower than their average over the past decades. Definitely need to pump those numbers up again.
not even close
at the height of Vietnam we spent 9%
8% was considered a lot in the Reagan years
If I become president and spend a 100% gdp on military will I become CEO of Nato ?
Why is there a jap in there?
They were scrambling for all of Germany's Pacific territories once WW1 started.
it is no mistake
Japan was at war with Germany in the first great war
they took tsingtao and some islands
While other countries spent about 25 to 30 percent on the military, Prussia spent up to 65 percent of their money on the military for decades, especially in the years leading up to the unification of Prussia.
and still they managed to pay for some of the world's leading welfare programs with the remainder. those Prussians are so damn frugal
You cant compare any sort of historic level of state spending with todays armageddon-level debt fiat spending. They just dont compare at all. Its not that military spending has decreased, it that the size of the state in the west has increased to dwarf what states used to spend on both wars and everything else.
Most western countries' government spending makes up between 20 and 50% of total GDP. Compare that to before ww2 when it was less than 5%. Shits fricking fricked mate, big time.
Bofore WW1, Great Britian was spending 25% of it;s GDP on it's Navy.
Before and during the Napoleonic Wars 98% of the government budget was put into military.
But it's basically impossible to tell how much of the GDP that was.
But the government's role was to provide the military, it was the church's role to provide social services.
I.e. while the industrial revolution started earlier it didn't do much to increase quality of life. But after the End of the Napoleonic Wars the increased spending on social matters by the government REALLY increased that Quality of Life. Because government spending into military is overall a black hole, it has no return. Government spending into the people usually has a profit as it results in people being able to work at a higher quality (better education, better skill, better health meaning better experience for longer, more wealth).
Which made the GDP explode. So even if military spending steadily increased, GDP just rose so fast it completely outpaced military spending in relation to it.
Part of what drove the investment in social welfare was a demand for a populace capable of military service. Almost half of the British population in the 1850s was physically unfit for service. Add to that those unable to read orders and you see the military lobby for social services.
See: War in European History by Michael Howard
During the early modern period rival Italian city states would hire mercenaries to fight each other. The mercenaries often waited until the other side ran out of money and the enemy mercenaries walked away.