Jonah's Alternate History Part II

This is from Jonah's April 9 column again.  I called it part II because I'm still referring to the same column, although this part doesn't contain much alternate history.  It contains alternate reality.   Here we go:

As Mark Steyn recently noted in National Review, from 1951 to 1997 the share of British government expenditure devoted to defense fell from 24 percent to 7 percent, while the share spent on health and welfare increased from 22 percent to 53 percent. And that was before New Labour started rolling back Thatcherism. If America Europeanizes, who’s going to protect Europe? Who’s going to keep the sea lanes open? Who’s going to contain Iran — China? Okay, maybe. But then who’s going to contain China?

China is going to over run the world, eh?   First of all, it is hard to imagine a less useful measure of military capability than defense spending as a percentage of total budget.   What if your total budget is $100 and you spend it all on the military?   Do you then have the most powerful military in the world?    Of course not.   A much better (but still flawed) way of looking it would be to look at the number of dollars spent on the military.  At least that you're at least a little bit comparing apples to apples.   Here's a nifty Google spreadsheet with the military spending of various countries (you might have to save the spreadsheet if you want to sort it).   It is a couple years out of date, but at least it isn't thirteen years old (!) like Steyn's data.   If we take a look at the various defense budgets we find (in billions of dollars):

UK = $60
China = $61

About the same.  I don't see how look at dollars alone you can come up with much advantage for China.   It also is worth mentioning the British still have quite a good blue water navy, something the Chinese lack.    That's how you keep the shipping lanes open.   Okay, now for Iran, which Jonah says will come take over London unless the Chinese jump in:

Iran = $7.5

No contest.   It isn't even close.   Their budget is piddly.   There is no way Iran could stand toe-to-toe with the UK.   And the neglects the budgets of Germany, Spain, Italy, and all our other NATO allies.  How could a rational human being conclude Europe can't defend itself against Iran?    Iran!   These kind of statements make we wonder if Steyn and Goldberg even believe the stuff they write.  

Now, I mentioned that just looking at dollars is still a flawed metric.  That's because just looking at the raw dollars doesn't tell us what UK bought with all that money.   But it tells us a helluva a lot more than just looking at the percentage of the total budget.   And we have also learned that Western European nations spend substantial amounts of money in relation to the size of their economies.     Goldberg's Iran boogieman is just more alternate reality silliness.