Don't panic.
China's leaders will announce this year's defense expenditure Tuesday, and if it's anything like last year (a rise of 11 percent), it'll be more growth; and Russia plans on spending an extra $755 billion over the next ten years.
Though the Pentagon plans to make $600 billion in cuts over the same period, Chinese and Russian spending increases don't mean the end of U.S. dominance.
America still spends much, much more than anyone, with $711 billion in military expenditures last year, compared to $143 billion in China and $72 billion in Russia.
The gap is big enough that other countries are the ones panicking.
Charles Clover of the Financial Times reports:
(President Vladimir Putin) singled out the US ballistic missile shield programme, as well as the possibility of further Nato expansion and the attempts to militarise the Arctic, as key geopolitical threats that Russia needed to respond to.
Then there's the corruption that's sucking up some of those foreign military expenditures. Certainly the U.S. has issues — a ship that costs twice what it should, and an expensive bird that can't seem to fly— but complaints of corruption and waste in Russia and China have grown louder every year.
Russia lost its defense minister to a thicket of corruption, one that has yet to be completely sorted out, and China isn't far behind.
From Christopher Bodeen of the Associated Press:
One especially feisty and widely quoted military commentator, Gen. Luo Yuan, wrote on his microblog recently that wasting funds on expensive cars and flashy but useless projects would ultimately be the PLA's downfall.
"Units that waste money on projects to boost their image and reputation, or that quest for the grandiose and exotic, are in fact frittering away our combat effectiveness," Luo wrote.
Meanwhile it looks like House Republicans are scrambling to pass a continuing resolution to fund the military as is until March 27, in the hopes cuts can be agreed upon. The resolution would restore $7 billion to the Pentagon's kitty.
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