Sipri Report 2020: Global Military Spending Also Increased During The Pandemic

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US fighter jets in Utah: In 2020, the US was responsible for 39 percent of global military spending

Photo: HANDOUT / REUTERS

Global military spending increased significantly in 2020 compared to the previous year.

This is the result of the annual survey by the Swedish peace research institute Sipri.

According to this, in 2020 countries worldwide invested a total of 1981 billion US dollars in the military.

That is a high since the Sipri surveys began in 1988. In 2019, global military spending stood at $ 1.917 trillion.

"We can say with reasonable certainty that the pandemic did not have a significant impact on global military spending in 2020," says Sipri researcher Diego Lopes da Silva.

This can be seen, for example, in the share of military spending in global gross domestic product.

This is down 0.2 percentage points

grew and is now 2.4 percent.

"The USA has invested primarily in the modernization of the nuclear arsenal"

Sipri expert Alexandra Marksteiner

With $ 778 billion and a year-on-year increase of 4.4 percent, the US remains by far the country with the highest military spending - it alone is responsible for around 39 percent of global defense spending.

That is almost as much as the defense budgets of the next twelve countries in the ranking combined.

"The USA invested primarily in the modernization of the nuclear arsenal, but also bought conventional weapons, ships and fighter planes on a large scale," says Alexandra Marksteiner from the Sipri Institute.

This is due on the one hand to the defense policy of former President Donald Trump, but also to the "perceived threats from China and Russia."

While US military spending fell between 2010 and 2017, it has now increased for the third year in a row.

Beijing wants to catch up

China is trying to reduce the backlog.

The Chinese defense budget has been growing steadily for 26 years.

At 252 billion, China was responsible for 13 percent of global military spending.

"Beijing has been carrying out very expensive modernization plans for years, especially in the marine sector," says Marksteiner.

India is also spending more and more money on the military.

With 72.9 billion dollars, the country ranks third in the Sipri rankings.

The defense budget grew by 2.1 percent.

In addition to the rivalry with China, the Kashmir conflict is also considered to be the reason for the continuous increase.

Russia also increased its military spending - $ 61.7 billion means an increase of 2.5 percent compared to 2019. However, Russia spent 6.6 percent less money in 2020 than planned in the defense budget.

In fifth place, Great Britain overtook Saudi Arabia (57.5 billion) with military spending of 59.2 billion dollars.

Despite the war in Yemen, spending by the Arab Kingdom has been falling for years.

Sipri attributes this to falling oil prices.

Overall, the first five countries in the Sipri survey were responsible for 62 percent of global arms spending.

German military spending continues to grow

Germany is in seventh place in the Sipri ranking with military spending of 52.8 billion US dollars.

According to Marksteiner, this is the highest value since 1993. In the previous year it was almost 50 billion.

German military spending has been growing since 2015.

As in 2019, Germany shows the strongest growth (5.2 percent) among the top ten countries. According to Marksteiner, this is due, among other things, to the defense policy of the Union and Donald Trump. The former US president has increased the already great pressure from Washington for more military spending. However, Germany is still far from NATO's goal of spending two percent of its economic output on defense - Trump had repeatedly warned that this was the case. According to Sipri, the share of German military spending in gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020 was 1.4 percent.

In the coming year, Sipri expects a further increase in the German defense budget.

This is part of a European trend.

Defense spending in Europe rose by five percent in 2019, compared with four percent last year.

A total of 378 billion was spent on the military in Europe.

In a ten-year comparison, this corresponds to an increase of 16 percent.

Although global military spending rose last year, it is still too early to assess the general effects of the corona pandemic, says Marksteiner: "The increase is the result of long-term planning that is not always easy to correct." In one year give it more clarity.