NATO power

I mostly just want to show what Matthew Yglesias found. I've long tried to impress on people that the US military so dwarfs all possible contenders with the US as to be ridiculous. We spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined! We are set up to take on everyone else at once!

I'd never realized, though, that all of our allies could probably take on the rest of the world without our help. This is just ludicrous.

So, why are we so reluctant to cut our own spending? Remember, our spending is over twice the longest line on that graph.

Lessons? Don't knock our NATO and non-NATO allies spending, and let's get some sense into our own.