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From the interwebs:

Kazakhstan is increasing its defense spendings. They will made over 1 trillion tenge ($8.6 billion) in 2013-2015. The increase is related to procurement of modern armament, Tengrinews.kz reports citing Kazakhstan Finance Minister Bolat Zhamishev.

“Emergency situations prevention defense spendings will make 1.3 trillion tenge ($8.6 billion) in 2013-2015. 425.8 billion ($2.8 billion) of them will be spent in 2013, which is 71.9 billion ($479 million) and is 23.3 percent more than in 2012. The increase is mainly related to a raise in the expenditure for procurement of modern armament for military vehicles, enhancement of the material-and-technical base of the military forces, stepping up of the system of prevention and elimination of the emergency situations, as well as introduction of a target compensation for rental of housing for militarymen in relation to adoption of the law on military service and militarymen status,” Bolat Zhamishev said at the government meeting.

Spendings of Kazakhstan's security forces will increase next year as well. One of the reasons for the increasing costs is salaries raise. “The expenditure of the law-enforcement authorities and special forces for protection of the public order and ensuring security for the three-year period will make 1.4 trillion tenge ($9.6 billion). 481 billion ($3.2 billion) of them will be spent in 2013. The significant growth of in expenses of the law-enforcement authorities is related to increase of bonuses for special titles up to the level of salaries for military titles,” Minister said.

One quarter of the defense budget of the country was spent on re-armament in 2012.

$3b a year is a long way from matching Russia's ~$100b. Still, Saddam spent a fraction of the US defense budget; yet Iraq was able to kill about 5,000 GI's. Odds are that any Russian occupation of Kazakhstan would be accompanied by jihadist attacks on Russia itself that will inflict a much higher death toll on Russia. The US obviously has the option of supplying the Kazakhs with the kind of weaponry used by Afghans to bleed the Russians dry. It will be nice to get yet another bite at the Russian apple. We did lose 100K GI's, thanks to Russian sponsorship of North Korea and North Vietnam. That debt was never fully repaid.