The United States is far and away the largest military spender on the planet–but you probably already knew that. How much more? In 2010 the US accounted for 42.8% of all military spending in the world (and has doubled military spending since 2001). The next nearest competitor, China, accounts for 7.3% of global military spending. The UK, France, and Russia each spend roughly 3.7%. Japan, Saudi Arabia, Germany and Italy round out the top ten. All other nations spending 25.3% combined.
In dollar terms, the grand total spent on military offense and defense in 2010 was $1.6 trillion. So based on those calculations, done by a Swedish think tank, the US outspent China by 5.86 times.
So, cutting US military expenditure roughly in half would mean 21.4% of global spending would be from the US–$3.424 billion. That’s a lot of money that either could be saved entirely or repurposed in some proportion for domestic non-military programs
How much energy could be saved? Of all military spending, energy accounts for a small proportion, roughly less than 2% of total military expenditures and 2% of total US energy usage–but is 93% of all US government energy consumption.In fact, the US military is the single biggest consumer of energy in the nation, at about 932 trillion BTU in 2009, resulting in 4% of all US carbon emissions.
Oil accounts for 78.5% of all US military energy usage (54% of that is jet fuel); electricity is 11%, direct use of natural gas comes in a bit under electricity. Direct use of coal and other sources of energy are small fractions of total usage.
What we really ought to be considering is whether such a large military is needed at all. Cut spending in half but keep the proportion of energy spending to total expenditure the same and you’d end up with just 2% of US emissions coming from the military and radical cuts in total government energy usage. All while either saving or freeing up billions of dollars.
– from treehugger.com