Passenger on Nostr: My understanding is that it's a mixture of the two and with a third factor too. ...

My understanding is that it's a mixture of the two and with a third factor too.

Russia is a cheaper country than France or the UK, so money spent there goes quite a bit further. You can pay more Russian salaries with $1m than you can French salaries. So Russia does have some advantage there, but if you add together European spending then it's still much more.

There's a third factor:

C) Defence spending is a bad measure of military power. This is because defence spending is mostly (in most countries) used for purposes other than winning wars. For example, military bases in rural towns are often used as a bandaid for rural unemployment. Weapons manufacturing is often carefully spread across politically-influential districts to win the support of their representatives. A lot of it goes straight into the pockets of corrupt well-connected contractors and consultancies. The money says "defence" on it but it's really being used for rewarding loyalty or shoring up the cracks in the system.