Global military spending reached a new record high in 2023 for the ninth consecutive year, a report released today suggests.
According to this report, published by the Stockholm-based International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI, military spending in real terms, excluding inflation, will increase by 6.8% in 2023, reaching 2.44 trillion. dollars, against 2.24 trillion in 2022, mainly because of the war in Ukraine.
This is the largest annual increase since 2009, the Institute underlines.
All 10 countries with the highest military spending in the world have greatly increased them; the Russia-Ukraine war is seen as the main reason for their spectacular rise.
“All the regions we study have seen an increase,” which reveals that “the world feels less safe and is probably resorting to harsh measures for their security rather than diplomatic means,” SIPRI researcher Lorenzo Scarazzato told the German Agency.
Many governments perceive the escalation of “tensions and instability” and therefore increase their military spending, above all the European ones, after the invasion of the Ukrainian territory by the Russian army in February 2022, he explained.
The USA they remain by far the number one worldwide, with military spending reaching $916 billion. This is more than a third – 37% – of the world’s military expenditure and an amount about three times that of the country that occupies the second place in the ranking: China.
The Beijing spent an estimated $296 billion on China’s armed forces, or about 12 percent of global military spending, up 6 percent year-on-year, according to the Institute.
In other words, the US and China accounted for almost half of global military spending last year.
The top seven countries in the ranking remained unchanged from 2022, according to the report. THE Russia remained in third place, followed by India and the Saudi Arabia.
THE Germany took 7th place, just behind Britain.
Berlin is often criticized because its military spending “has not yet reached 2% of its GDP, the NATO target,” noted SIPRI researcher Scaratzato. However, one has to take into account that Germany is the country with the second highest military expenditure on the old continent, behind only Britain, and that the percentage of its expenditure in 2023 was 1.5% of GDP, yet it has pledged to will increase this to 2% from 2024 onwards.
Things are “changing” in Germany, he emphasized.
Alexander Lurtz, a disarmament expert at Greenpeace, chimes in, stressing that Germany “now has a significant contribution to the global arms race.”
“The disgraceful 7th place on the list of countries with the world’s largest military budgets should make anyone calling for a second special fund or debt brake reform to re-equip the Bundeswehr think again,” he added.
For Mr. Lurtz, security cannot be achieved simply with military armaments: “We can see that massive armaments do not make the world safer, on the contrary they make violence worse everywhere.”
Global military spending equals 2.3% of global GDP.
The largest percentage increase in the top ten of the ranking was recorded in Ukraine: it was 51%, with spending reaching $64.8 billion. From 11th in 2022, Ukraine ranked 8th in 2023. Military spending accounted for nearly 60%—58% to be exact—of its total government spending.
The figure is much higher than that of Russia, where military spending accounted for 16% of total public spending.
Other countries have provided Kiev with at least $37.3 billion in military aid. Ukrainian military spending and foreign aid is estimated to account for 91% of Russian military spending.
In Russia, military spending rose 24% to $109 billion in 2023, SIPRI estimates.
