Conflicts drive global military spending to record high

Military spending around the world rose almost 7 per cent to a record $2.4tn last year, the steepest annual increase in 15 years, according to research.

Russia’s war in Ukraine was the main driver of European defence spending, but for the first time since 2009, military expenditure also increased in the other four main geographical regions, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a leading think-tank, said Monday.

Escalating geopolitical tensions in Asia and the Middle East helped drive the increase in global defence spending to 2.3 per cent of global economic output, Sipri said in its latest annual survey of global defence spending.

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Among the biggest national increases was a 24 per cent rise in Russian defence spending to an estimated $109bn. Although Sipri cautioned that this figure underestimated the true amount, it represents a 57 per cent increase since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. It also accounts for 16 per cent of total state spending and is equivalent to 6 per cent of Russia’s gross domestic product.  

By comparison, Ukrainian defence spending rose 51 per cent to $65bn, the eighth highest level in the world. However, even after adding western military aid, defence spending on Ukraine was still 9 per cent short of Russian levels last year — and that was when western military aid to Ukraine was at its highest, Sipri data showed.

The US House of Representatives passed a $60bn military aid package for Ukraine late on Saturday after months of delay had left Kyiv short of critical weaponry in the face of Russian advances.

Overall, European defence spending rose 16 per cent to $588bn as “the war in Ukraine . . . fundamentally changed the security outlook”, said Sipri researcher Lorenzo Scarazzato.

Sipri’s figures are expressed in real terms in constant 2022 prices, which take into account inflation.

The US remained far and away the world’s biggest military spender, with its defence budget rising more than 2 per cent last year to $916bn, equivalent to 37 per cent of the global total.

China, the world’s second-largest defence spender, allocated an estimated $296bn to its military in 2023, an annual increase of 6 per cent and China’s 29th consecutive year-on-year rise in military expenditure. 

Several of China’s neighbours linked their own increases to China’s rising military might. Japan’s defence spending rose 11 per cent to $50bn, while Taiwan’s defence spending rose 11 per cent to $17bn. Defence spending in India, which has the world’s fourth-biggest military budget, rose 4 per cent to $84bn.

Middle East defence spending rose 9 per cent to $200bn — the highest annual growth rate in the region for a decade — driven by increased spending in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel.

Israeli spending increased 24 per cent, rising from an average of $1.8bn per month before Hamas launched its assault on Israel in October last year to $4.7bn in December, said Sipri.  

Iran remained the fourth-largest military spender in the region, with 37 per cent of its estimated $10bn defence budget now allocated to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps compared with 27 per cent in 2019.

Military spending also rose in certain Latin American countries, such as the Dominican Republic, as governments there reacted to the rising might of criminal gangs.

“States are prioritising military strength but they risk an action-reaction spiral in the increasingly volatile geopolitical and security landscape,” said Nan Tian, senior researcher at Sipri.