1989–2020 · active personnel + paramilitary (excl. reservists)
Active military personnel, paramilitaries included, reservists excluded. Manpower is a permanent cost, not a projection capability.
Series covering 1989-2020. The "paramilitary" perimeter varies from one country to the next — gendarmeries, border guards, internal troops: that is the main reason two manpower rankings disagree.
The 1989-2020 curve tells the story of the end of mass conscription in Europe. A country can cut its manpower threefold and increase its firepower: capital substituted for numbers.
China still has the world's largest army by manpower, but cut it by 300,000 in 2015 to fund its navy. North Korea maintains more than a million soldiers on a GDP roughly the size of Iceland's.