Hcss report

2.2 Why Great Powers Matter More
Great powers still have a quality of their own.
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Power, especially military power, is not 
distributed equally among all states, as shown in Figure 2.3 (the size of the rectangles 
represents how much money countries spent on defense in 2012. (Expenditure is in 
constant 2011 US dollar).
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
50
41
40
36
24
23
12
11
9
7
6
5
5
2
France
Number of Great-Power Wars participated in
England
Austria- Hungar
y
Spain
Russi
a
Turke
y
Netherland
s
Germany
Unite
d
Hapsburg
s
Swede
n
Japa
n
Ital
y
US
China

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STRATEGIC MONITOR 2014
FIGURE 2.3 TREEMAP OF WORLD MILITARY EXPENDITURES 2012
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Figure 2.3 clearly shows how unevenly military power is distributed in the world
today – a statistic that has not changed since the end of the Cold War. HCSS has 
computed an indicator that is sometimes used to express inequality in economic data 
like income distribution (the Gini-coefficient), but that we applied to the global 
distribution of military expenditures. This statistic shows the military Gini-coefficient 
hovering around the .9 mark since the end of the Cold War,
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i.e., very close to ‘1’ 
which would mean total inequality (one power spending 100% and other countries 
nothing). 
But whereas global military inequality has not changed, the distribution between the 
great powers certainly has. We can see this in more detail in Figure 2.4, which 
represents – based on the same data as Figure 2.3 – the shares of global military 
spending accounted for by China and Russia,
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the two major powers this report will 
focus on. It also adds the United States and the European Union for comparison.
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