Is the U.S. vs. Russia really a contest of equals? Well no, other than nuclear arsenals, it shouldn’t be. Here are some facts and figures from the CIA World Factbook, with China thrown in for good measure.

GDP (purchasing power parity)

• USA: $19.36 trillion
• Russia: $4 trillion
• China: $23.12 trillion

GDP per capita (purchasing power parity)

• USA: $59,500
• Russia: $27,900
• China: $17,000

Military budget

• USA: 3.29% of GDP ($637 billion)
• Russia: 5.4% of GDP ($216 billion)
• China: 1.9% of GDP ($439 billion)

So compared to the U.S., China has a slightly larger overall economy spread out over a lot more people, but directs less of its economic output to the military and ultimately underspends the U.S. Russia’s economy is only 1/5th the size of the U.S., but it diverts a lot of its people’s wealth to military spending so it can be roughly 1/3rd the size of the U.S. military. So Russia really is not a worthy adversary at all, it’s a poor country whose leaders want to project an image of strength to its people as a substitute for actually making their lives better. The average American still has a much higher living standard than the average Chinese in spite of our military spending, but we shouldn’t just take this for granted as we may be still riding past momentum and slowly drifting into the slow lane.