Strength in NumbersUpdate: Don’t bother reading what I wrote below. Too often, analysts point to total military expenditures as a means to compare relative military strength. Is this really the best way to measure the relative military strength of two or more countries? Military spending is an easy way to measure military strength, insofar as it can provide an initial estimate for assessing the comparative military strength of two or more countries and/or be included in an introduction to set the stage for the main argument. Not exactly the model for spending money efficiently or wisely, huh?