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US troops during an exercise: In 2021, more money was not only spent on buying weapons and equipment, but also on military research
Photo: LEON NEAL / Getty Images
In 2021, countries around the world spent more than two trillion US dollars on the military for the first time.
This emerges from an annual survey by the peace research institute SIPRI in Stockholm.
As a result, global spending increased by more than six percent compared to the previous year - to a total of $2,113,000,000,000.
According to the report, the United States still accounts for the largest share of global military spending.
The country invested around 800 billion US dollars in defense in 2021.
The United States spent about as much on its defense budget as the next ten countries in the ranking combined.
At the same time, the United States' share of global arms spending fell slightly by one percentage point compared to the previous year, because China, India, Great Britain and Russia have been increasing their spending for years.
China wants to catch up
"We assume that this trend will continue for some time," says Alexandra Marksteiner from the Sipri Institute to SPIEGEL.
"China has set itself the goal of modernizing the Chinese People's Army by 2035." By 2049, according to the Chinese leadership, the People's Army should be a "world-class" military.
"These modernization programs are expensive," says Marksteiner.
The government in Beijing spent an estimated 293 billion US dollars on armaments and defense last year.
Like the United States, China is also investing large sums in the further development of the armed forces and research.
The development of artificial intelligence, hypersonic missiles and cyber weapons played a particularly important role, says Marksteiner.
Europe invests more
Despite economic slumps caused by the corona pandemic, international military spending continues to grow.
This continues a trend that has been going on since 2015.
According to the Sipri report, the European and East Asian countries in particular have upgraded in the past year.
In Europe, these are mainly countries in Central and Eastern Europe such as Poland, Romania and the Baltic States.
In East Asia, Korea and Japan in particular were arming themselves – also as a reaction to China's armaments policy.
In other regions, on the other hand, spending fell, at least in some countries.
Saudi Arabia, the country with the largest military spending in its region, has reduced its military budget in recent years - by 15 percent over the past decade.
The reason for this is the falling income from energy exports, according to Marksteiner.
In recent years, Ukraine has been one of the countries that has invested heavily in its defense.
Since 2012, Ukraine's defense budget has more than doubled.
The war led to a further increase.
However, the government in Kyiv is heavily dependent on support from abroad.
This also affects the budgets of our European neighbors.
Germany spent around 56 billion US dollars on armaments in 2021.
That means 6th place in the Sipri ranking list.
The Federal Republic thus spent 1.3 percent of its gross domestic product on the defense budget.
This year, Germany could possibly reach the two percent target set by NATO for the first time.
If the 100 billion euro Bundeswehr special fund were to be passed and Germany thus met the NATO requirement this year, it would be the largest increase in military spending since the Second World War in absolute terms, says Marksteiner.
However, it is uncertain how Putin's war will affect Russian military spending.
Last year Moscow invested almost 66 billion US dollars in its defense budget.
“Conservative estimates are that Russia spends $250 and $350 million a day on its war.
That's a lot of money," says Marksteiner.
“Although energy prices are rising again, and with them potential income, the Russian economy has been weakened by the increased sanctions.
It all depends now on how long the war lasts.”
