Budget Analysis: Foreign Affairs Spending

In an old lecture given by Rory Stewart, from when he was chair of the Commons Defense Committee, he says that despite all Syria's growing importance at the time, and all the talk the Foreign Office was putting out, the British Diplomatic Service only had 2 civil servants over D7 rank, that's equivalent to an army captain, working on the problem.

Simply amazing, I thought to myself. And it made me wonder, how much are our NATO Allied spending on their foreign ministries? Every year, lots of outlets publish rankings of defense budgets, but no one publishes a ranking of foreign ministry spending. This is my attempt at compiling a ranking for 2017.

Why is it important? Lots of our allies like to talk big, but we should judge our allies according to their actions, not mere talk. An interesting thing to note is that most countries spend more on overseas development aid than on their foreign ministry. Below, I have tried as best I can to exclude that aid spending.

P5 Foreign Affairs Spending for 2017

Country..................................Budget.................................In 2017 Dollars 
US.................................22,669,987,000 USD.....................22,669,987,000
Russia.....................................???..............................................Will Add
France...........................3,028,400,000 EUR........................3,724,053,764
China............................8,500,000,000 USD.........................9,500,000,000
UK................................2,000,000,000 GBP.........................2,784,280,000

Select European/NATO Foreign Affairs Spending 

Country..................................Budget.............................Year
Germany.............................5.232 Billion EUR.........,,,...2017
Canada................................63,614,791 CAN.................2017
Holland...............................8 Billion EUR......................2018
Finland................................1.92 Billion EUR................2018

Take this data with a bit of salt. For instance, I don't think Holland is outspending Germany. And despite the Canadian Prime Minister's appalling performance in India, I'm being overly conservative with their figure. Canada just happens to provide a much more detailed breakdown of departmental expenditure.

Foreign Affairs Spending of American Allies in Asia

Country.................................Budget.......................Year
Japan.........................................???...........................Will Add
Korea...................2,068,320,000 Billion USD..........2017

Of course, what exactly is this measuring? What I want to measure is the capacity of a country to understand other countries. I'm interested in this because of Amy Chua's book Political Tribe, which I reviewed in a earlier post. In this book she makes a passing claim that the British understood tribes better, using that understanding to divide and conquer the subject peoples of its Empire.

I think this is true. The French did it, too. And the French have retained some of that knowledge, which they have employed to good use in Mali. That said, I think it is a very expensive capacity to develop. Given that we're spending far more than any other country, I doubt they're able to do a better job than us, except in countries they specialize in. For instance, the French with certain parts of Africa. The Nordic countries with Russia.

In conclusion, we spend a lot of money on our foreign policy apparatus, not just our military.