[powertower]

I don't think those values can be interpreted like that.

They are some type of "trend indicator values" that "do not represent real financial flows but are a crude instrument to estimate volumes of arms transfers, regardless of the contracted prices, which can be as low as zero in the case of military aid".

I'm pretty sure the US exports for sale dollar amounts much much more than anyone else does.

There is also the question of the graphed "value" of small arms vs larger systems.

[eldr]

I agree with you, I don't think this graphic (or at least the underlying data) is very useful as an indicator of international military relationships. Of course it doesn't claim to be either.

As a single example, I recently decided that I don't know enough about US-Israel relations and started reading more on the topic. A report[1] I found linked from Wikipedia states that the US has provided Israel with $121 billion dollars (non-inflation-adjusted) since WWII, almost all of it military aid. The graphic shows $35 million in exports to Israel for 2013, the report lists $2.9 billion dollars in military aid in 2013.

If those figures didn't make it onto the graphic, there are probably many others which also don't.

[1] http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf