Israel, again, ranked as most militarised country in the world

Global military index ranks Israel most militarized nation in the world

Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam
24.01.12

The Bonn International Center for Conversion maintains the Global Military Index, which lists the nations of the world according to the level of militarization of their societies. Coming in first again in 2012 is Israel.

[1.Israel, 2. Syria, 3.Singapore, 4.Russia, 5. Jordan, 6.Cyprus, 7. N. Korea, 8.Kuwait, 9.Greece, 10. Saudi Arabia]

Here are the criteria used to determine a country’s ranking:
With its Global Militarization Index (GMI), BICC is able to objectively depict worldwide militarization for the first time. The GMI compares, for example, a country’s military expenditure with its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and its health expenditure. It contrasts the total number of military and paramilitary forces in a country with the number of physicians. Finally, it studies the number of heavy weapons available to a country’s armed forces. These and other indicators are used to determine a country’s ranking, which in turn makes it possible to measure the respective level of militarization in comparison to other countries.

You’ll notice Iran isn’t even in the top 10 (32nd in 2010). The U.S. was 30th.

The next twenty
BICC ranking of 148 countries

The higher a country in the BICC index the more functions within society the military has, and the more people and equipment it deploys domestically.

The ratios used by BCCI do not include any political measures.  But the ranking  marks American favouritism – of which Israel is the outstanding benefactor and the closeness of the military/political elites.  It marks a rough inverse correlation with measures of democracy,  freedom of speech and  regional trust. The number of Arab countries in the top 30 – the ratios were measured before January 2011 – may give a clue to the Arab revolutions.  Altogether, the whole MENA (Middle East and North Africa) area is highly over-militarized or under-supplied with medical and educational facilities and personnel.

The BICC index primarily tells us about the domestic significance of the ratio of military spending .  Following this are the conventional rankings (by amount spent and as proportion of GDP which measure different features of miitary ambition at home or abroad.

Sweden is 55th, the UK  65th, Germany 81st, China 83rd.

Top 30 countries by amount spent, ranked as proportion of  GDP, 2009
1. Saudi Arabia 11.2%
2. UAE 7.3%
3. Israel 6.3%
4. USA 4.7%
5. Singapore 4.3%
6. Russia
7. Algeria 3.8%
8. Colombia 3.7%
9. Chile 3.5%
10. Greece 3.2%
11. S.Korea 2.9%
12. India 2.8%
13. Turkey 2.7%
……U.K.          “”
15. France 2.5%
16. Taiwan 2.4%
17. China 2.2%
18. Australia 1.9%
19. Poland 1.8%
…..Iran      “”
…..Italy    “”
22. Brazil 1.6%
….. Norway “””
24. Canada 1.5%
….. Netherlands  “”
26. Germany 1.4%
27. Belgium 1.2%
28. Spain 1.1%
29. Japan 1.0%
30. Indonesia 0.9%

Top 30 countries ranked by amount of military expenditure, 2010 $
1 United States 687,105,000,000
2 People’s Republic of China 114,300,000,000
3 France 61,285,000,000
4 United Kingdom 57,424,000,000
5 Russia 52,586,000,000
6 Japan 51,420,000,000
7 Germany 46,848,000,000
8 Saudi Arabia 42,917,000,000
9 Italy 38,198,000,000
10 India 34,816,000,000
11 Brazil 28,096,000,000
12 South Korea 24,270,000,000
13 Canada 20,164,000,000
14 Australia 19,799,000,000
15 Spain 15,803,000,000
16 United Arab Emirates 15,749,000,000
17 Turkey 15,634,000,000
18 Israel 13,001,000,000
19 Netherlands 11,604,000,000
20 Greece 9,369,000,000
21 Colombia 9,191,000,000
22 Republic of China (Taiwan) 8,535,000,000
23 Poland 8,380,000,000
24 Singapore 7,651,000,000
25 Iran 7,044,000,000
26 Norway 6,322,000,000
27 Chile 6,198,000,000
28 Indonesia 6,009,000,000
29 Algeria 5,586,000,000
30 Belgium 5,382,000,000