It’s a fascinating column but as it’s 13 years old wouldn’t much of the information be outdated and perhaps misleading?
Yeah, the defense budget is definitely not $281 billion anymore, by this point it’s probably over double that amount, in the $600 billion range.
But as a percentage of GDP, US defense spending is not unreasonable. It’s just a case of large GDP x a sizable-but-not-too-sizable percentage of GDP and it adds up to a sum that may pop some eyeballs, except that nobody blinks at mandatory spending like the trillions of dollars in OASDI + Medicare/Medicaid, etc.
Finally, a great deal of US defense spending goes right back into the US economy. Unlike many other nations, the United States manufactures the vast majority of its own arms at home - F-35s, SSNs, etc. So most of US defense spending money isn’t wasted, in the sense that it isn’t going abroad, it’s staying in the United States. Whereas countries like Denmark, for instance, buy F-35s from the US.
By that measure, the US is only barely in the top 10. (First table, sort by “% of GDP”.)
Of course, the top of that leaderboard is dominated by Middle Eastern nations. Tells you a little about where the real tension is in this world.
I don’t think it really requires an update. It’s basically the same reason (i.e. the US spends so much because we have global commitments that the rest of the next 6 don’t have, etc etc). The information is a bit dated, but, basically, you can extrapolate the numbers by looking at the growth of the economies of the nations portrayed along with monetary inflation. If you simply look at the military budget as a function of GDP and a percentage of GDP you are pretty close to how spending has changed in the last 13 years. While updated stats would be cool, the main points remain the same really, so don’t think it’s misleading at all.