Who Gives Two Hoots About The Houthis!

Yesterday we noted that the ascension to NATO of the Balkan Five (Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania) and the Baltic Three (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) amounts to some kind of bad joke. Their combined active military forces total just 66,000 servicemen, which is exactly equal to the combined 66,000 man police forces of New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

Likewise, their combined defense budgets are $8 billion annually or about the level of Pentagon spending every seven hours, including weekends, holidays, snow days and the Fourth of July parades, military bands and all. And when it comes to economic heft, their collective GDP is a diminutive $350 billion or just 1.3% of that of the USA.