10 Countries With the Largest Military Budgets

On Nov. 8, U.S. citizens elected Donald Trump their 45th president, a position that is widely believed to be the most powerful in the world. He will be commander in chief of the world's largest military, one that has spent an average of $650 billion annually since 2010, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Each of the countries perceived to be the among world's most powerful, including Russia, China, Germany and the U.K., also rank in the top 10 for military spending.

[DISCOVER: The world's most powerful countries, according to perception.]

Relying on hard, military power to maintain these top spots of global dominance may not be the way of the future, though. The decision to engage in war in Iraq and Afghanistan hurt U.S. image abroad in the early 2000s. More recently, disapproval of U.S. leadership has been steadily increasing since at least 2009, according to the World Gallup Poll. Instead, global citizens are voicing a desire for soft power.

The U.S. president-elect's plans for military spending are vague. He has asked NATO members to devote more of their budgets to defense spending, which he says could help reduce commitments from the U.S., but he has also said that he would be willing to amplify the war on ISIS in Syria and Iraq, which could be costly.

When it comes to military spending per person and as a percent age of total government budget, the U.S. falls behind countries like Israel, that spends nearly $2,000 per person annually on defense, and Saudi Arabia, where more than a quarter of government spending goes to defense.

Many of the countries with the greatest military spending fund the manufacture of supplies that are sold to other countries, like Iraq. According to the most recent report, more than 10 percent of the U.S. defense budget goes toward developing and testing products. Even if U.S. military spending was cut by 10 percent, however, it would be still be more than double that of China's, the second largest.

[READ: What Donald Trump's win means for the world.]

While Iraq may not furnish much of its own military supply, it has nearly tripled its military spending in the past five years, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Saudi Arabia and China nearly doubled their military spending in the same time frame, as did Azerbaijan, Paraguay, Honduras and a handful of other nations.

Here are the 10 countries with the largest militaries, by spending, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Deidre McPhillips is a data reporter at U.S. News. You can find her on Twitter or email her at dmcphillips@usnews.com.