Nowadays you can't invade very much with 31m$.
Some 150b$, i.e. x 50 - has been spent so far in Iraq.

Maybe Clint would have done a better and less expensive job of it.

Grenada? Clint made a movie about that lil enterprise.

That's x 4800 (approx.), Jacob. Added to which the US had a trillion dollars worth of hardware and infrastructure, and trained manpower standing by.

It's hard to hire that sort of stuff in on a zero-budget basis. Though one does doubt the Pentagon, given a $31M-dollar invasion to do (St Pierre & Miquelon?), could manage it on budget and without unnecessary casualties.

If you spent the $31m on a good mercenary outfit, there are probably quite a few African countries you could take over.

You can't usually make much of a movie for $31m these days either. Clint is well known for his extremely frugal film-making. His films always come in ahead of schedule and under budget. In Hollywood that is virtually unheard of. As to whether he could apply this frugality to a war, that is another question.

You can't usually make much of a movie for $31m these days either.

I disagree strongly. That sum won't fund top megastars, the most elaborate sets, or the most intense special effects - but if a film has a credible plot, compelling characters, and interesting dialogue, it will do well.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, for instance, cost $15 million and grossed over $128 million in the US (and £686,386 in the UK).

Directors who can't make good low-budget films lack imagination.

What about the isle of Man/Ellan Vannin? I hear they have good money-laundering contacts.

Sark/Sercq - pop 600?

Tuvalu - before it (apparently) sinks?

St. Kilda? (Atlantic, not Melbourne)

"If you spent the $31m on a good mercenary outfit..."

Yes. Rumsfeld should have outsourced the Iraq job.

Hey now, Iraq is a bad example, no one would have invaded _them_ for profit.

But for 31m you could invade an awful lot of countries successfully. A substantially smaller number might be held on to, but given the rotten management of those, you rather think that the locals would support anyone that would enforce a little basic order, and wasn't a homicidal lunatic.

For the rest: invadeable but not holdable. I fancy a little viking raiding, anybody else?

"I wonder what particular country he had in mind."

Maybe California?

Beck. thirty-one mill would only cover setting up the Democratic Republic of Carmel these days...

If you spent the $31m on a good mercenary outfit, there are probably quite a few African countries you could take over.
-Chris H

Most of the easily-knocked-over outfits in Africa haven't been knocked over because nobody with half a brain wants to knock them over.

Still, I seem to recall some South African outfit managed to bring a modicum of sanity to Liberia (or maybe it was one of the other hellholes) for a modest expenditure, before they got shut down by the UN.

That amount could get Zimbabwe out of the hands of the murderer Mugabe very easily.

It seems that £14 million will buy you the British government these days.

Okay, I will qualify with a "You can't make much of a movie in Hollywood with $31m", Hollywood's cost structure being what it is. It is perfectly possible to make good movies for considerably less if you do it somewhere else.

Bollywood, for example. At some point, I expect they will start to make mainstream movies,