World expenditures on arms reached an impressive $1 trillion in 2012. That same year, however, the global economy was $85 trillion, meaning arms sales accounted for a little over 1 percent of all expenditures. That’s still a lot. But the “right” level of defense spending – like the right budget for police or firemen – cannot be determined in abstract mathematical terms. It has to be related to the nature and scope of the threats – of which there are dozens globally at any moment.
The U.S. military budget in recent years has been about $800 billion, just under 5 percent of the whole U.S. economy ($17 trillion/year). And U. S. arms sales abroad were $80 billion, half a percent of GDP. Big numbers, but relative to everything else in the economy, a significant but not unreasonable amount, especially for the nation that often has had to step in when others won’t or can’t, sometimes in humanitarian missions. By comparison, Apple alone has over $100 billion in reserves it can’t decide where to invest in an uncertain global economy – more than America’s arms sales per year.
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