Russia is in third place
Ukraine war pushes global military spending to all-time high
April 22, 2024, 3:02 a.m
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Global arms spending continues to rise, as the latest report from the peace research institute Sipri shows. The most important reason is obvious: Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine. The latter invests well over half of its national budget in the military.
Global military spending has once again reached an all-time high. For the ninth time in a row, the figures exceeded last year’s spending, according to a new report from the Stockholm peace research institute Sipri. Accordingly, spending in 2023 rose by 6.8 percent, adjusted for inflation, to $2.44 trillion – the largest year-on-year increase since 2009. In 2022 it was still $2.24 trillion. The ten largest donors have all significantly increased their spending.
The USA remains undefeated at the top. At $916 billion, they accounted for 37 percent of global military spending – about three times that of second-place China with an estimated $296 billion. Together, China and the USA were responsible for around half of global spending in 2023.
Russia is in third place, followed by India and Saudi Arabia, as in 2022. Germany was once again in seventh place among the countries with the highest spending – just behind Great Britain. Global military spending was equivalent to 2.3 percent of global gross domestic product.
Pursuit of “hard security”
One of the main reasons for the repeated increase is the war between Russia and Ukraine. “All the regions we map have increased. This gives us a perspective on a world that feels less safe and perhaps resorts to harsh security measures rather than diplomatic means,” said Sipri researcher Lorenzo Scarazzato. A country perceives tensions and instability and therefore prefers hard security rather than diplomatic means, and may therefore invest more in military spending.
“When it comes to Germany, it is often criticized because it has not yet achieved NATO’s two percent target,” said the Sipri researcher in reference to the evaluations. “What we perhaps shouldn’t forget is that Germany is one of the most important economic powers in Europe and is the second largest military spender in Europe after the United Kingdom.” Germany therefore has a high effective share of expenditure.
The largest percentage increase in the top 10 group was in Ukraine. Their military spending rose 51 percent to $64.8 billion. At 58 percent, military spending accounted for more than half of total government spending. The proportion was therefore significantly higher than in Russia, where 16 percent of total government spending went towards armaments. But Russia is actually investing more in armaments. Together with military aid from other countries amounting to at least 35 billion euros, around 91 percent of Russia’s arms volume was reached.