Global military spending increases by $2 trillion – DW – 22/04/2024

On Monday, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) updated its military expenditure database for 2023, as top countries such as the United States, China and Russia increase their military budgets.

Military spending has increased in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. It is the first time since 2009 that annual spending has increased at once in all geographic regions surveyed by SIPRI.

With a budget increase of 105%, the Democratic Republic of Congo stood out as the country with the largest increase in military spending in percentage terms in 2023. Researchers attributed this to the long-running conflict between the government and non-state armed groups.

‘Size and scope’

Xiao Liang, a researcher at SIPRI’s military spending and arms production program, told DW that “what may be surprising is how big the increases are in the rest of the world, especially in Latin America and Africa.”

Liang said the governments of Mexico and El Salvador used the military for internal affairs, such as fighting organized crime and gang violence. Ecuador and Brazil show similar trends, he added.

“The increase in itself is not that surprising, but what matters is the size and scope of the increase,” Liang said. “In terms of the global trend, if current conflicts and tensions continue, we are likely to see further increases in the coming years.”

War expenses between Ukraine and Russia

Ukraine has remained a hotbed of conflict since Russia’s large-scale invasion in 2022.

At 5.9% in 2023, Russia’s military spending relative to gross domestic product (GDP) reached its highest point since the end of the Soviet Union, Liang said.

By comparison, Ukraine’s military expenditure was 37% of GDP. “So the war burdens Ukraine much more than Russia,” Liang said. The naked figures highlight that the battle between Russia and Ukraine is uneven, but Western support has helped Ukraine create a level playing field, preliminary SIPRI reports show.

“Due to last year’s spending trend, all but three countries in NATO increased their spending,” Liang said. “And we also saw the largest number of countries, in 11 of NATO’s 31 members, meeting or exceeding the 2% of GDP target, which is the highest since the end of the Cold War. “We expect more countries to join NATO. Even now that Finland and Sweden are joining NATO, I think spending by NATO countries as a whole will continue to rise.”

Chinese regional conflicts

The conflict between China and Taiwan also drove up military spending in 2023. China increased military spending by 6% from the previous year, allocating approximately $296 billion to the military in 2023. That is about half of the total military expenditure in the Asia and Oceania regions. . Liang said China is spending most of its growing military budget on boosting the combat readiness of its People’s Liberation Army.

“We see that trend clearly because if you look at spending, it has been increasing for 29 years in a row,” Liang said. “That is the longest period recorded by a single country. In particular, it is increasing in parallel with the pace of economic growth, regardless of fluctuations in geopolitical tensions or a global crisis such as the war in Ukraine or COVID.”

Liang said China’s military modernization has prompted countries such as Japan, Taiwan and India to increase their military spending. Japan and Taiwan both increased their military spending by 11%, to $50.2 billion and $16.6 billion, respectively.

Fear of regional spillover effects

Another notable development in SIPRI’s database is South Sudan’s increased military expenditure. Marked by internal violence and spillovers from the civil war in neighboring Sudan, the world’s youngest country increased military spending by 78% compared to 2022.

Countries across Europe feared security threats from Russia for another year. Poland increased its military spending the most of any European country, by 75% compared to 2022, to $31.6 billion in total.

In the Middle East, Iran is the fourth largest military spender, with a budget of $10.3 billion.

Global ‘militarist framework’

Niklas Schörnig, a political scientist at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF), told DW: “We live in an era where military security has again become a priority and security is defined in a militaristic framework. In that sense, these numbers are just a reflection of that mentality.”

Schörnig pointed to Ukraine and the recent blows between Iran and Israel and also noted that defense is much more expensive than an offensive. “Take for example the drones that Iran supplies to Russia and that Iran recently deployed,” he said. “Organizing that kind of defense is extremely cost-intensive.”

Schörnig, PRIF’s senior researcher on international security, said conflicts such as the war in Ukraine were proof that the logic of disarmament has reached its limits. Instead, he said, the world has entered a new era in which armaments are spiraling out of control because most arms control agreements are outdated or no longer in use.

To counter this, Schörnig proposed a new international goal. “States must return to controlled armaments,” he said. “They must agree that they will not arm themselves beyond a certain level. This might de-escalate things a bit. Arms control could be an intermediate goal, a way to limit and stabilize armaments, and prevent everyone from arming themselves wildly as they please.”

It is likely that the SIPRI report on military spending in 2024 will report an increase in spending at some point. In 2023, Israel’s massive offensive in Gaza and tensions in the wider region led to the highest annual growth in military spending the Middle East had seen in a decade.

In the Middle East, total military spending increased by 9% to $200 billion. Israel’s military spending alone rose 24% to $27.5 billion, second only to Saudi Arabia.

Schörnig said he had a pessimistic view. “If the general political climate does not change, I do not believe that the current upward trend in armaments will end,” he said. “This would only be possible if Ukraine reached a peace agreement that would not divide the country,” he added.

He also said he hoped the United States and China could negotiate to control the regional conflict with Taiwan.

Even if they could, he said, “the current geopolitical situation is like a powder keg, and SIPRI’s numbers reflect exactly that.”

This article was originally written in German.