The states of the world will spend almost two trillion dollars on their military. Peace researchers suspect that this will initially have been a maximum. Because even in terms of military spending, the Corona crisis should not simply go by.
Stockholm (dpa) - Led by the strongest military power in the USA, the countries of the world put almost two trillion dollars into their defense apparatus last year.
Globally, an estimated $ 1.917 trillion ($ 1.77 trillion) was spent on the military in 2019, and before the corona pandemic began, 3.6 percent more than in the previous year, according to a report by the Stockholm peace research institute Sipri.
This corresponded to 2.2 percent of the global gross domestic product and an estimated $ 249 per citizen. At the same time, it was the fifth consecutive annual increase and a new high since comparable Sipri records began in 1988. After the largest annual increase among all the top 15 countries, Germany came in seventh on the list.
In view of the Corona crisis, peace researchers assume that it will initially peak in global military spending. The economic downturn associated with the pandemic will have a major impact on government budgets and all their spending in 2020, Sipri researcher Nan Tian told the German Press Agency. The countries would have to weigh up whether they would rather spend their funds on the military or in health care, education or infrastructure.
"Covid-19 will affect every country, no doubt," said Tian. The financial crisis in 2008 and 2009 showed that a global crisis had an impact on military spending.
Until then, the U.S. remains the clear leader in military spending, spending around $ 732 billion on defense in 2019. This corresponded to an increase of 5.3 percent compared to the previous year and almost the total expenditure of the ten following countries combined.
This has to do in particular with the policy of US President Donald Trump: "The decision to increase spending has already been discussed under the Obama administration, but it was only under Trump that a very expensive modernization project was pushed," said Tian. There has been a sharp increase in US military spending, particularly in the past two years.
For the first time in history, two Asian countries are ranked among the top three in the ranking behind the USA, China and India. "China has long had the ambition to compete with the United States as a global superpower," said Tian. India, on the other hand, sees China as a direct regional threat in the struggle for influence in Asia and Oceania and is also in conflict with Pakistan.
The largest percentage increase among the top 15 countries, on the other hand, was recorded in a completely different country: According to Sipri, compared to the previous year, German military spending rose by ten percent to $ 49.3 billion. Given the pressure from NATO and US President Trump to increase defense spending, the Federal Republic overtook Great Britain and Japan and is now in seventh place worldwide.
Germany, like several other NATO countries, still clearly misses the NATO target to increase defense spending to two percent: According to Sipri, the Federal Republic accounted for 1.3 percent of the gross domestic product, across Europe this is an average of 1.7 percent.
However, the peace researchers pointed out in their report that their estimates for Germany were $ 3.3 billion lower than what the country had stated for 2019 as "defense spending" at NATO. This can be justified by the fact that Berlin included in this expenditure, among other things, non-military expenditure, for example for certain humanitarian and development aid, which Sipri does not count towards military expenditure.
Sipri found relevant data from 150 countries for the annual report this time. In the reports, the institute traditionally relies not only on official government information on the defense budget, but also takes into account other sources such as statistics from central banks and NATO, as well as government responses to surveys by the United Nations. Expenses for personnel, military aid and military research and development are also included in the expenditure. The destruction of weapons and civil defense, however, are not counted among other things.