Nobody in the world can spend money on defense like the Pentagon.

Last year, U.S. defense spending registered $581 billion. The next closest spender on the military was China … at $129 billion, according to the Military Balance report prepared by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). Third on the list was Saudi Arabia at $81 million.

Russia, which has been saber rattling in the Crimea and the Ukraine and making the rest of Europe nervous about its imperial ambitions, spent $70 billion on defense in 2014, one-eighth of the U.S. expenditures.

According to John Chipman, director-general and chief executive of IISS, as 2014 started, European countries weren’t expecting to need to take military action. The Russians proved them wrong. “While in early 2014, the concern was about possible military conflict in Asia, the salient strategic reality of the year was the re-emergence of conflict in Europe and the ever complicating and widening nature of extreme Islamic terrorist groups’ activity in the Middle East and Africa,” Chipman wrote, according to The Washington Post.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, Steve Straehley

To Learn More:

Chart: U.S. Defense Spending Still Dwarfs the Rest of the World (by Adam Taylor, Washington Post)

New Open-ended Military Engagement in Middle East Comes to Rescue of U.S. Defense Industry (by Noel Brinkerhoff and Steve Straehley, AllGov)

Military Spending Down in U.S.; Up in Middle East, Asia and Africa (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

U.S. Spends $1 Trillion a Year on Defense and Security (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)