Global military spending at new high

Created: 04/25/2022Updated: 04/25/2022 04:44

The USA remains the undisputed leader in arms spending with more than 800 billion dollars.

© Armin Weigel/dpa

Global military spending has been increasing for years.

There is also a new record in the second year of the pandemic.

Germany's spending falls slightly due to inflation.

Stockholm - For the first time in one year, the countries of the world have spent more than two trillion dollars on their military apparatus.

Global military spending rose to $2.113 trillion in 2021, the Stockholm-based peace research institute Sipri said in a new report.

Adjusted for inflation, this corresponds to an increase of 0.7 percent compared to the previous year.

This is the seventh year in a row that spending has increased.

"Even amid the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, global military spending has peaked," said Sipri researcher Diego Lopes da Silva.

Due to inflation, the growth rate has slowed down - but if you ignore this, the increase was a whopping 6.1 percent.

Germany's spending lower than last year

The significant economic recovery after the first Corona year 2020 meant that the share of military spending in global economic output fell slightly by 0.1 percentage points to 2.2 percent in 2021.

Eight European NATO countries reached the military alliance's target of spending at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense - that was one state less than in 2020, but a significant increase compared to 2014, when only two states reached this mark had.

According to Sipri, Germany's percentage of GDP was 1.3 percent in 2021.

Due to inflation, German military spending was 1.4 percent lower than in 2020 at $56 billion (51 billion euros). This means that the Federal Republic is still the country with the seventh largest military spending in the world.

Leader USA - China is catching up

The United States is once again the undisputed leader.

US military spending, adjusted for inflation, also fell 1.4 percent year-on-year, but at $801 billion, it was still larger than the nine other top ten countries combined.

According to the peace researchers, the USA has focused primarily on military research and development in recent years.

The US government has repeatedly emphasized the need to maintain the US military's technological lead over strategic competitors, emphasized SIPRI expert Alexandra Marksteiner.

But China is catching up: After another increase of 4.7 percent, the peace researchers estimate Chinese military spending in 2021 at 293 billion dollars (268 billion euros).

This time they are followed at some distance by India, Great Britain and Russia.

Russia rearmed

Speaking of Russia: In the year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the military spending of the giant empire grew by 2.9 percent to $65.9 billion (60 billion euros), which corresponded to a 4.1 percent share of Russia's gross domestic product.

In the process, President Vladimir Putin's country benefited from revenues from the fossil fuel business, as Sipri expert Lucie Béraud-Sudreau explained: "High oil and gas revenues helped Russia to increase its military spending in 2021." Between 2016 and 2019 Russian spending fell due to low energy prices and sanctions imposed in connection with the annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, but has risen several times since then.

Ukraine has increased military spending since annexing Crimea

Since the aforementioned annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine has increased its military spending by 72 percent in the face of the Russian threat.

In 2021, however, they fell by an estimated 8.5 percent to $5.9 billion.

They accounted for a 3.2 percent share of Ukraine's economic output.

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

more on the subject

WTO warns of the consequences of the Ukraine war for the global economy

NATO countries spent billions on defense

Allianz Trade: World trade under pressure from two sides

Sipri publishes an annual report on military spending around the world at the end of April.

It is considered to be the most comprehensive data collection of its kind in the world. The peace researchers rely on official government information on the defense budget and on other sources and statistics - the figures therefore traditionally deviate from the information provided by NATO and individual countries.

Expenditure also includes expenses for personnel, military aid and military research and development.

dpa