WaPo: Germans wonder why Trump keeps lashing out at them and not Russia/Saudi

[Simfan34]

Is 150,000 active duty really acurate for Britain? I had assumed their military had shrink more significantly.

i am quite intrigued by the numbers myself (especially italy) but...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3581019/The-number-active-duty-soldiers-Army-lowest-pre-World-War-II.html

Italy's numbers are likely inflated by the inclusion of the Carabineri and the Financial Police. I imagine the same applies to Spain with the Guardia Civil.

But yes, it's a shame that May has not committed to reversing the defence cuts when that would play well with the public aside from making good sense in its own right. I bet she could openly raise defence spending to 3% of GDP. Even Corbyn is slamming her for cutting defence and police spending-- boy, are British politics in a very different place than ours. Brexit should be seen as both motivation and justification for Britain asserting itself more in defence issues and increasing its capacity, making itself indispensable; the goal should be to restore the military to its 1997 levels.

The size of "peace dividend" was overestimated, full stop.

[Simfan34]

Is 150,000 active duty really acurate for Britain? I had assumed their military had shrink more significantly.

Good grief. Isn't that low enough?!

I was just asking because I saw some articles say that it had fallen to 80,000 or something similar.

The British Army had 83, 560 regular soldiers and 29,940 reservists as of 1 April this year. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/597051/Monthly_service_personnel_statistics-_February_2017.pdf

So 113,500 total force. It isn't that bad due to British lack of engagement but it is lower than the 2010 142,000 total force figure.

That's just the Army. In 2014 the total for all three branches was 159,630. In 2010 it was 191,660 and in 1997 210,800.

[Simfan34]

Sim, the total force numbers would refer in this case to just the Army land forces but spot on with the overall numbers, UK defines overall force (Regular+reserve components) as "UK Service Personnel."

Where are you getting that from? The chart refers to just "military personnel", so that would be inclusive of navies, air forces, etc. It's the only way those numbers would make sense; the Italian Army doesn't number 320,000 soldiers.