Statistical-comparative research

T his article will observe the CSTO collective military and military-technical general potential within the research framework. This study will also compare the CSTO with global, NATO, and other countries.

First of all we will try to present some statistical data on the subject from language corpora and from Internet search engines, which will make the topic as widely covered as possible. In Google N-gram’s English language domain between 1992-2008 CSTO [1] military data is compared with World/NATO/U.S./Germany/Russia military phrases.

Google N-gram viewer tool couldn’t find the complete versions of CSTO military as well as CSTO abbreviation. The U.S. military phrase is pretty high (104.4 mil. references in 2008). World military phrase was used 207 thousand times.

It is also possible to analyze the whole database of Google and Yandex search engines, where you will find content repetitions [2]. The results of the U.S. military phrase have preserved the application’s frequency logic of the Google N-gram in the English language domain. In Google, the NATO military phrase was the penultimate, having been used 115 mil. times.

In Yandex the U.S. military phrase had the highest indicator (94 mil.) within the search of the same words [3].

Drawing on the parallels in Google N-gram’s [4] English language domain within the Armed Forces/Army versions. Google N-gram viewer tool couldn’t find the CSTO Army phrase (it also refers to CSTO Armed Forces, Collective Security Treaty Organization Army versions). United States Armed Forces version is leading in usage frequency (it was mentioned 2.1 mil. times in 2008).

The quantitative results’ of data references in Google search engine does not deviate, even if searching Armed Forces/ Army versions. As a result of ВС/Армия (Armed Forces/Army) search in Yandex search engine the ВС ОДКБ (Armed Forces CSTO) version had the highest index of about 299 mil. We have also marked out data in Google N-gram’s Russian language domain: the quantitative advantage of the ВС РФ (Armed Forces of the Russian Federation) phrase references is quite obvious. We have also mentioned ВС ОДКБ (C STO Armed Forces) version in the data, although there were no results (we couldn’t find data about Армия ОДКБ, Вооруженные силы ОДКБ phrases either).

On the number of references on Вооруженные силы США (Armed Forces of the USA) has nearly the same amount of references as Вооруженные силы РФ (Armed Forces of the RF). We find it important to clarify, that in case of Вооруженные силы США, Вооруженные силы РФ data between 1992-2008 the quantitative development dynamics was quite proportionate. Therefore, the references of the above mentioned data were interconnected content.

World militarization tendencies

A ccording to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIRPI) the world military expenditure was $1739 bil. in 2017, which increased by 1.1% compared with 2016 [5]. According to 2017 statistics, the RF(Russian Federation) military expenditure decreased for the first time [6] making $66.3 bil., which is 20% less compared with 2016. Moreover, according to the 2017 data, Russia had the highest rate in military expenditure cuts ($13.9 bil.). In 2017 the world military expenditure began to grow again, which is the result of China, India, Saudi Arabia military expenditure.   

In 2017 China was the second highest country in military expenditure. In the same year the military expenditure indicator of the PRC grew by 5.6% making $228 billion.

Military expenditure in 2017 according to the top five countries having the highest shares, $ bil.

Place	Country	Military Expenditure $bil.	GDP, %	Share in the World Military Expenditure, %
World		1739	2.2
1	USA	610	3.1	35
2	PRC	228	1.9	13
3	Saudi Arabia	69.4	10	4
4	RF	66.3	4.3	3.8
5	India	63.9	2.5	3.7

Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Military Expenditure Database

The schedule was drawn based on the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database.

We have also observed the comparative statistics of CSTO, NATO and the global collective military expenditures.

The schedule was drawn based on Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Military Expenditure Database.  

Below we will mention the military expenditure indicators’ development change of CSTO member states, without Russia.

Source: SIPRI 2018 https://www.sipri.org

The same statistics is available in the World Bank database, where the given indicators are reviewed wider within 1992-2017 chronological period.  

https://data.worldbank.org

The data of Tajikistan is unavailable in this source.

One of the indicators of the state’s military potential assessment is the percentage correlation of the military expenditure to GDP. In this regard the indicators of Russia, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan are the highest among the CSTO Member States. This statistics shows, that in the above mentioned states GDP, the military expenditures pass the threshold of 3%, and the corresponding figures for the other member countries of the organization do not exceed 2%.

The 2013, 2016-2017 data of Tajikistan are unavailable.

Source: https://www.sipri.org

General description of military technical characteristics of CSTO Member States

A ccording to The Military Balance 2018 [7] data from The International Institute for Strategic Studies most of the quantitative volumes refer to Russia.

Source: International Institute for Strategic Studies. The Military Balance 2018թ.

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[1] CSTO - The Collective Security Treaty Organization

[2] It is known that the results in Google/Yandex search engines are changeable. Google search engine provides data with up-to-date chronological coverage, which is shown by the usage frequency of the U.S. military phrase preserved in Google N-gram English language domain in the last decade.

[3] Collective Security Treaty Organization military high data rank (59 mil. reference) is the result of being a Russian information platform of Yandex.

[4] We have also marked down data with the help of Google Scholar tool, where the NATO term has been mentioned about 862 thousand times and CSTO about 10 thousand times in the English language domain from 1992-2018 time range.

[5] The world military expenditures are still in the high level: 1,7 trillion dollars,  https://www.sipri.org

[6] The same link.

[7] https://www.iiss.org/

[8] We have presented in the list attack helicopters conducting (fighting and multipurpose) activities. There are also data in The Military Balance 2018 report about non-attack helicopters (reconnaissance, management and transport, overall 13 points).

[9] The indicators of the Republic of Artsakh are not recorded in the data.

[10] There are also 26 transport helicopters.

[11] Information and statistical data about the attack airplanes and helicopters of the Russian Air Forces available on the Internet are quite controversial. Moreover, you can get confused when working with these types of data, as the non-attack technique is also calculated in it. Hence these indicators are presented in an approximate calculation.