Europe

[Furunculus]

So what . Are you disputing the figures from HM treasury and the French dept. of defence?

And before that you had 18 years of the conservatives not only spunking money up the wall but selling off the countries assets for peanuts

Defence spending is a very complex thing Tribesman, and very hard to compare.
Does set of figures X include:
> operational expenses
> attrition replacement
> equipment procurement
> R&D projects
> Intelligence apparatus
Then you must ask yourself if figures for nation Y include the same, and they mostly do not.
For example while the Gendarmerie are under the control of the Interior Ministry I believe they are funded from the Defence budget.
So official figures published from their respective nations have little merit for comparative purposes, which is why i went to the trouble of getting the figures pulished by the IISS in the 2008 publication of The Military Balance.

again, so what? how does that relate to having a vast public debt which derives from annual additional public spending which amounts to £200+ billion each year since 97?