Why do you think that France, Germany and the UK "seem scared of Russia"?

@Philipp, Yes. Their body language suggests that Russia seems to be always a headache and defense threat for them. And, if no, why US alliance and NATO is still so important?

"body language"? Seriously?

@Philipp, Yes. Even if Russia cracks a rat, these countries seem to rush towards USA to invite them in their soils to set up missile shield, military base and so forth.

In real terms, Russia's defence budget is far higher than it appears. It is simply that their soldiers are paid less in hard currency terms than those of western Europe. They also have a far larger nuclear component (the legacy of the Soviets) than Britain and France combined. But I believe that in the coming years you will see a greater coming-together of the military arrangement of the Western European countries (in spite of the current Brexit (negotiations).

Most liberal democracies think there's better things to spend money on than the military. By contrast, Russia is nationalistic and are willing to spend money on a military. Don't have any sources, so I haven't posted this as an answer.

@Philipp - (1) history and geopolitics; (2) because they have no other meaninful military threat; so if they weren't afraid of Russia, they would spend even less on military.

> Most liberal democracies think there's better things to spend money on than the military. Historically that has worked out well for them, right? :) the barbarians, the vikings, the germans, the turks, and the russians were all defeated at the first sight of those liberal democracies, I'm sure.

The questions seem to imply the answers. 1) They have larger economies because they spend less on defense. 4) They seek US help because 2. and 3 (and the US pays for it). 5) See 4.

I don't have the history background to tie this to your specific countries, but as a general rule for any country, military expenditure is waste unless it is used, either for offense or defense. Countries typically seek to minimize this waste unless they see a particular offensive or defensive value. For example, the United States values their status as a "superpower," and is known to leverage that to their advantage. In theory, the advantages they gain outweigh the waste of military spending (to be debated as you please).

Nobody's mentioned the sizes of the countries in question, or their coastlines. Germany is physically much larger than the UK, but UK is all coastline. France is similar in size to Germany, but has two long coastlines. Turkey is stuck between the Middle East, Europe, and Russia. Russia is a vast country, with multiple coastlines. To answer your questions I would definitely include these factors into my research, but I'd also be looking at the effectiveness of training, the responsiveness of each of the armed forces, and the efficiency of investments in, and maintenance of equipment.

I'd also take combinations of EU countries as single entities when weighing against Russia. France + UK, France + Germany, Germany + France + UK. That's how the forces operate in reality. When you do this, the Russian columns start to look puny.

@Rich The relevant sizes in thousands of square kilometres are: France 552, Germany 357, UK 244. I honestly don't think this has much relevance at all to the size of each country's military. However the fact of Britain's extensive coastline is one of the things which predisposes Britain to have a far larger proportion of naval forces, and with smaller investment in land forces than the others. Historically this has always been the case. Britain, in her history, was never equipped to fight a land war in Europe without allies. She was far more concerned to keep her sea lanes open.

Why are you [implicitly] counting Russia as a European country? It's... not. In every major way, Russia is a nation that is somewhere between a Western/European nation and an Eastern/non-European nation. Which probably gives you most of your answer to this and other related questions about Russia... it's different from Europe because it's not European (or at the very least, not quite European).

"always seem to be scared of Russia" As an European, I can tell you that most educated under 35 people I know from thouse countries (except maybe UK) are more concerned from the US military than from Russia´s

In the table, could we add three columns for spending per capita and spending per military personel and spending per GDP? That would probably strengthen the statements. Also given a source and a year might be appropriate.

I guess the answer is that more autocratic countries tend to spend more on military on average but geopolitics also plays a role.

Also these are too many questions in one. It would have been better to split them into multiple (more focused) questions.

@agamesh An odd assertion, considering the US is militarily allied via NATO with each of them, and actively stations troops in all but France IIRC.

They are in the EU, I would rather compare EU's military budget to that of russia. In comparison the question is why russia spends so little on military when the EU is spending multiple times that amount.

The question does not even make sense: Question 1 is about why they spend less than Russia, question 5 is about how it is possible than blablabla given that they vastly outspend Russia. Obviously question 1 is about each country individually and question 5 about all of them together but you can't have it both ways (and assume they all have the same reasons or depend on NATO), this just doesn't make sense…

There are 2 reasons to buy something: 1) because you can, and 2) because it ads value. Since we talk about government spending, the first option shouldn't apply: they spend on the military to add value. Spending even more on military does not create a high value for Germany France and Britain. On the other hand, Russia is regularly involved in actual military conflicts, has real external threats, and makes up imaginary external threats to help the rulers stay in power.

If you add another column, defExp/area you get (taken from wolfram alpha) $1743.51/km^2 yr | $117100/km^2 yr | $219300/km^2 yr | $24530/km^2 yr | $100300/km^2 yr |