2023 top 10 NATO countries in defense expenditures as a % of GDP are, in order of said %:
Poland, US, Greece, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Romania, Hungary(!), Latvia, UK (2.07%)
Poland and the Baltics are high (so to speak) spenders because they have colonial interests in Africa, etc.?
OTOH, France is only 1.9%.
Generally, the countries low on the list have buffer countries between them and Russia. Greece being an exception (high, at 3.0%), but they have Turkey to worry about. Turkey conversely is low, but is poor per capita and has a very large population to provide it’s vey large military manpower. Russia would TRULY be fools to invade Turkey.
A nice combo of truths, partial truths and nonsense you posted there. What other drivel do you have up your sleeve?
I was comparing Russia to us, the US..
But since you mention allies.
Russia’s allies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Security_Treaty_Organization
And this is not a complete picture because MOST of Russia’s allies such as Chechnya, Armenia, and Uzbekistan are mired down with internal struggles, i.e. Islamic based terrorism / threats. These nations are not able to deploy much of their military, Intel or security apparatus outside the country as this risks internal or external (Armenia with the Turks) problems.
The US and our European allies alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO.
Which does NOT include Australia (help us often), South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, or allies in the Middle East like Israel, Jordan (doing some of the work in Syria for us), Saudi Arabia (doing some of the work in Yemen for us) and Egypt (doing some of the work in Libya for us), or allies in South East Asia such as Thailand. And then you have our central and south American resource which while not a formal military ally provides a near unlimited supply of warm bodies as we are using today in Ukraine (many of the mercenaries come from Mexico, Columbia, Brazil).
So, you latch onto % GDP for our allies as a last straw argument since you have nothing else, albeit even there the US and Russia are about equal. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re ignorant and not a liar, so I’ll attempt to explain the error in that thinking. When a nation like France with an economy ~ $3 Trillion and a population of 56 million spends 2% of their GDP on defense, they still spend more on defense than ANY of Russia’s allies, they still have more people in uniform than ANY of Russia’s allies. Belarus is Russia’s most potent military ally and they have a GDP of ~ 70 billion and a population of 9.4 million.
What does this actually mean? France has Rafael fighters, Leclerc tanks, and ~200,000 active duty personal; Belarus has uses junk for tanks, junk for fighters and has 63,000 men in uniform.