Soviet defense spending

National Review, June 30, 1989

THE TYPICAL Soviet military conscript is paid seven rubles per month. His American volunteer counterpart is paid $966.30. On this basis one ruble spent by the Soviet armed forces is the equivalent of $138 spent by the Pentagon, and total Soviet defense spending, if you accept the 77.3-billion-ruble figure announced by Mikhail Gorbachev in his speech to the Congress of People's Deputies, is the equivalent of our spending $10.7 trillion.

Absurd? Of course. But no more absurd than debating whether the USSR spends $128 billion-less than half the Pentagon's $300-billion budget-as Gorbachev's number at the official $1.65 exchange rate would indicate; or $200 billion, as the CIA says; or $475 billion, which is simply 20 per cent of the latest estimate of Soviet GNP. The point is, there is no point in comparing nominal spending amounts between two such disparate economic systems, one where prices reflect the true value of resources as determined by the marketplace, the other where prices are set by a central statistical apparatus to meet specific political and budgetary objectives. Far more meaningful to compare quantities: they have 2.5 times the number of active-duty military personnel that we have, an eighthundred-ship navy, four times as many tanks produced each year, fifty times as many space launches in 1987, etc., etc.