You can tell a lot about military affairs by looking at the budget. Checking the news and history books doesn't show you nearly as much. So let's look at the ten biggest defense budgets since 1940.

Annual defense spending in America is now running about $275 billion. Since 1940, we've spent some $19 trillion on defense. The smallest annual budget in this period was 1948, when we spent only $90 billion. The largest was 1945 - $768 billion.

Rank		Year		Defense Budget (in Billions of Year 2000 Dollars)
1		1945		$768
2		1944		$724
3		1943		$595
4		1986		$418
5		1987		$417
6		1988		$415
7		1989		$409
8		1990		$398
9		1946		$393
10		1968		$393

Not surprising that the three largest budgets were during World War II. This was an even bigger effort than it appears to be, for the population was much smaller than today (135 million then, 270 million today). And the gross domestic product (GDP) was smaller still. At the start of World War II, GDP was $1.4 trillion; in 1945 it was $2 trillion. Today, it's close to $9 trillion.

World War II was a major national effort, with nearly 40 percent of GDP going for defense by the end of the war. It never came close to that again for the rest of the century. But we were still spending a lot more on defense in the 50 years after World War II. Even the smallest postwar budget, the $90 billion spent in 1948, was some four times larger, as a percent of GDP, than before World War II. The largest chunk of GDP for defense after 1945 was 13 percent in 1953 ($317 billion), at the end of the Korean War. For the rest of the 1950s, defense spending consumed about 9 percent of GDP. Even at the height of the Vietnam War in 1968, defense spending was only 9.2 percent of GDP. A growing economy made it easier to handle the growing military spending.

But after Vietnam, it wasn't the money that bothered the voters, but the 57,000 Americans who were killed in that war. So the defense budget shrank, big time, going from $393 billion in 1968 to $263 billion in 1976. OK, it was $286 billion the year before we got sucked into Vietnam, but military gear was getting more expensive. However, government spending did not decline, for another war was declared, the war on poverty.

The federal budget was $871 billion in 1968, and nearly $1.1 trillion in 1976. Spending on welfare quadrupled in the ten years after 1965. Urban renewal doubled. But that was not all. The politicians decided that it was best to have something for everyone, especially those who voted (the poor tended not to). More money went to hospitals, education and Social Security. Something for everyone, except the troops.

Everything changed when it became common knowledge that the Soviet Union had started an arms race in the mid-1960s. This was part of a deal between the generals and some politicians to get rid of Nikita Khrushchev. Poor Nikita had the misfortune to try to cut back on military spending and put the money into building up the economy. Khrushchev was a true believer in the ability of communism to deliver the good life, but he could count and knew this wasn't going to happen as long as the military was absorbing so much of the Soviet Union's wealth. Fellow politicians saw their opportunity, agreed to a massive increase in defense spending, the generals agreed, and Nikita was history. President Eisenhower had warned America about the power of the military-industrial complex; too bad the Russians weren't paying attention.

By the late 1970s, the alarming growth of the Soviet military brought forth a demand that America respond. We did, thus five of the biggest defense budgets since World War II were those between 1986 and 1990. Then the cold war ended. We had spent the Russians into the ground. Turns out Khrushchev was right. The Soviet economy could not grow without defense spending being cut. And as the Russians increased military budgets instead, the Soviet economy just slid down and down. It was a mess.

The Soviets were devoting up to 30 percent of GDP to defense. The Russians weren't sure, as accurate accounting practices were seen to be counterrevolutionary. Meanwhile, America was having its own economic problems. Fighting a war in Vietnam and against poverty simultaneously actually brought "war spending" to World War II levels. At the same time, Japan was becoming a formidable industrial power and exporting much of its production to America. Germany was recovering from the devastation of World War II and also flooding America with high quality goods. Steel, ships, automobiles and consumer electronics industries in the U. S. were feeling the heat. The stock market, always the canary in the coalmine, sensed this first and headed south for most of the 70s.

American management and workers - in moves that shocked the Japanese, Germans and many local pundits - reorganized U. S. industry and got the economy going again. Right about the time the Russian arms buildup became an issue. The result was a string of huge defense budgets. The Russians soon folded, mainly because their economy had already been trashed by 20 years of unbearable military spending.

Top ten lists don't have to be funny to be useful.

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