Global military expenditure last year surged to an eighth straight record at US$2.24 trillion, or 2.2 percent of the world’s GDP, global security researchers said yesterday.
The rise was driven in part by the record growth in Europe’s military spending, which last year reached a level unseen since the Cold War following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said.
“It’s driven by the war in Ukraine, [which is] driving European budget spending upwards, but also the unresolved and worsening tensions in East Asia between the US and China,” said researcher Nan Tian, one of the study’s coauthors.
Europe spent 13 percent more on its armies last year than in the previous 12 months, in a year marked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The figure does not take into account sharp inflation rates, which means actual spending was even higher, the think tank said.
That was the strongest increase in more than 30 years, and a return, in constant US dollars, to the level of spending in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell.
“In Europe, it is at its highest level since essentially the end of the Cold War,” Tian said.
Ukraine alone increased its spending seven-fold to US$44 billion, or one-third of its GDP. The country has additionally benefited from billions of US dollars of weapons donations from abroad, the institute said.
At the same time, Russian spending rose 9.2 percent last year, estimates showed.
“Irrespective of whether you remove the two warring nations, European spending has still has increased by quite a lot,” Tian said.
Spending in Europe, which totaled US$480 billion last year, has already risen by one-third in the past decade, and the trend is expected to continue and accelerate over the next decade.
The continent could “potentially” see growth levels similar to last year for several years, Tian said.
After falling sharply in the 1990s, global military expenditure has been on the rise since the 2000s. The upturn was initially the result of China’s massive military investments, which was then followed by renewed tensions with Russia after its annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The US alone accounted for 39 percent of global military expenditure. Together with China, which came in second at 13 percent, the two nations accounted for more than half of the world’s military spending.
Those next in line lagged far behind, with Russia at 3.9 percent, India at 3.6 percent and Saudi Arabia at 3.3 percent.
“China has been increasingly investing in its naval forces as a way to expand its reach to Taiwan of course, then further out than the South China Sea,” Tian said.
Japan, as well as Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Australia are all following the trend.
The UK is the top spender in Europe, coming in sixth place overall and accounting for 3.1 percent of global expenditures, ahead of Germany at 2.5 percent and France at 2.4 percent — figures which include donations to Ukraine.
Britain, Ukraine’s second-biggest donor behind the US, “spends more than France and Germany. It also gave more military aid than France and Germany,” Tian said.
Countries like Poland, the Netherlands and Sweden were among the European countries that increased their military investments the most during the past decade.
Modern and costly weapons also explain some spending hikes, as in the case of Finland, which last year purchased 64 US F-35 jets.
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