[OC] The Further from Russia, the Less You Care: European Defense Spending vs Distance from the Eastern Front
Posted by einmaulwurf
![[OC] The Further from Russia, the Less You Care: European Defense Spending vs Distance from the Eastern Front](https://www.byteseu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/axolpkt7yfce1-1024x796.jpeg "[OC] The Further from Russia, the Less You Care: European Defense Spending vs Distance from the Eastern Front")
[OC] The Further from Russia, the Less You Care: European Defense Spending vs Distance from the Eastern Front
Posted by einmaulwurf
18 Comments
Inspired by [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1hyuhaw/the_association_between_defence_spending_and/) post in r/europe I created by own version with updated values from 2024 and the shortest distance from border-to-border (excluding exlaves, especially Kaliningrad).
Values on defence spending are from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_in_Europe_by_military_expenditures) and the geospatial data from Eurostat. All analysis and plotting is done in R using the tidyverse packages, namely dplyr and ggplot2.
I guess you COULD draw that line but it’s a massive stretch to IMO
Neat. Poland borders with Russia (Kalingrad), so 0 on x-axis, I think
Good example of how you can politicise data. What’s your r2? This is an awful way to support your argument.
I’d like to see a few more labels
Belarus is Russia Lite, so I’d count it, too.
Ireland is not in NATO, what’s the point here putting it? It’s as relevant as Morocco in security levels regarding Russia?
The false sense of security
Norway ‘s defence spending as percent of GNP in 2024 was 2.17%. I get a little worried when I spot a very obvious error. Don’t have time to check the rest.
**Where is** ***USA*** ??? The Bering Strait that separates US and Russia is 85 km (53 mi) wide, but within the Straight is a pair of islands that are only 3.8 km (2.4 mi) apart. Take your pick, USA and Russia are adjacent neighbors and USA should be on that graph.
I noticed that the US doesn’t fit on the graph…
Moldova pretty much have Russia camping in their backyard
What label is the Y axis? % of GDP?
Lithuania and Poland border Russia
All too close to each other, some very near countries have low spending while very far have a high spending, the line is almost flat, this doesn’t point to anything really
Do a graph comparing IMF loans to defense spending and see what it looks like.
Are they being leant money by the US to buy US weapons?
Greece isn’t really worried about Russia…
Lithuania borders Russia in the east, not just the Königsberg exclave.
As for Poland, the border with the exclave is 232 km long and is fairly easy terrain to cross in case of an invasion. In case of Norway, the border is almost 196 km long, along rivers, lakes, rocky terrain and dense forests. Would be much more difficult to invade.
Alternatives for the horizontal axis:
– length of border with Russia
– shortest distance from border to Moscow
– distance from capital city to Moscow.
– shortest distance from capital city to any border with Russia