On March 31, 2024, Ukraine, three soldiers stayed in a tank of the 1st Tank Brigade of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, hidden with camouflage netting.
Ukrainian News Agency | Noor Photo | Getty Images
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said on Monday that global military spending reached a record $2,443 billion in 2023 due to “deteriorating global peace and security conditions.”
That’s a 6.8% increase from 2022, the largest year-over-year increase since 2009, the institute said in a report. Report On military spending trends.
“The unprecedented increase in military spending is a direct response to the deteriorating global peace and security situation,” Minamida, a senior researcher with SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Weapons Production Program, said in a report. statement.
The report found that military spending has increased for nine consecutive years, with military spending increasing in all regions of the world for the first time since 2009. This is linked to other developments such as the war in Ukraine, growing tensions in the Middle East and the fight against organized crime and gang violence in Central America and the Caribbean.
Ukraine and Russia, which are active in war, top the list of countries with the largest military expenditure growth in 2023, with increases of 51% and 24% respectively. Russia’s actual military spending is still much higher than that of Ukraine, estimated at $109 billion, making it the third largest international military spender after the United States and China.
The report noted that this figure is likely an underestimate because Russia’s financial situation is highly opaque and the budget allocated for military spending is supplemented by businesses, individuals and organizations.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military spending totaled about $64.8 billion, about 59% of Russia’s spending but 37% of Ukraine’s GDP, the report said. That figure does not include the tens of billions in military aid Kiev receives, which has narrowed the spending gap between Kiev and Russia.
The war between Russia and Ukraine has also pushed up military spending elsewhere, prompting countries to think differently about their security prospects, Lorenzo Scarazzato, a researcher on military spending and weapons production at SIPRI, said in the statement.
“This shift in threat perception is reflected in the increasing share of military spending in gross domestic product, with NATO’s 2 percent target increasingly seen as a baseline rather than a threshold to be met,” he said.
Former President Donald Trump, a U.S. presidential candidate in this year’s election, warned in February that he would not protect Nato members that failed to make promised payments if Russia launched an attack. The comments sparked a political firestorm among allies and prompted NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to finally admit that some members were underfunded.
The SIPRI report found that Poland’s military spending surged 75% in 2023, while spending in Germany and the UK increased by 9% and 7.9% respectively. The United States is the country with the largest military expenditure, with military expenditure increasing by 2.3% annually in 2023, reaching US$916 billion.
China is estimated to be the second-largest military spender between the United States and Russia, with its military allocation estimated at $296 billion, an increase of about 6% from the previous year.
According to the report, tensions in the Middle East have also greatly contributed to the overall growth of global military spending. Spending in Israel, also in the midst of a fierce conflict, jumped 24% to $27.5 billion.
“The increase in spending is mainly due to Israel launching a large-scale offensive in Gaza in response to Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel in October 2023. Since the outbreak of the Gaza war, Israel’s monthly military spending has risen sharply: from a monthly It averages $1.8 billion and will reach $4.7 billion by December 2023.
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