How powerful are these guys?

There has been a lot of noise about ten central and eastern European countries that are standing shoulder-to-shoulder behind the United States in the Iraq situation. We read:

Ten central and Eastern European nations have issued a declaration of support for the United States' drive to disarm Iraq.   A statement from the so-called Vilnius group says it has become clear that Iraq is in material breach of U.N. resolutions.   The Vilnius 10 includes NATO aspirants Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

We decided to look up the figures for the ten countries, and this is what we found:

country	military budget (source: CIA World Factbook)
Albania	$56.5 million	(FY02)
Bulgaria	$356.0 million	(FY02)
Croatia	$520.0 million	(2002 est.)
Estonia	$155.0 million	(2002 est.)
Latvia	$87.0 million	(FY01)
Lithuania	$230.8 million	(FY01)
Macedonia	$200.0 million	(FY01/02 est.)
Romania	$985.0 million	(2002)
Slovakia	$406.0 million	(2002)
Slovenia	$370.0 million	(FY00)
TOTAL	$3,336.3 million

$3.3 billion. That's slightly less than the budget for the police department of New York City ($3.5 billion) [page 52 in the 2004 budget (4.1 meg pdf)].

What a coalition!

posted by Quiddity at 2/06/2003 07:34:00 PM