An insecure world launches into rearmament with a 9% military spending boom in 2023

An increasingly dangerous world advances decisively on the path of rearmament.

The Munich Security Conference, held this weekend, has clearly portrayed a trend with little sign of abating.

World military spending in 2023 was 9% higher than the previous year, reaching a value of 2.2 trillion dollars, a new record on an already ascending path, according to data published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies on the eve of the forum. .

This is a figure higher than the GDP of a country like Italy.

Everything indicates that the path will continue to grow.

The trend is global and especially affects Europe, due to the escalation of the Russian war and the prospects of a Donald Trump with little commitment to the allies returning to power in the United States;

Asia-Pacific, due to the rise of China and the aggressive rhetoric of North Korea;

and the Middle East, in the midst of a turbulent spiral in the wake of hostilities between Hamas and Israel.

Rearmament concerns both conventional and nuclear weapons, with the powers embarking on investments in modernization and innovation of arsenals.

At the Munich forum, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken took advantage of the presence of his Chinese and Indian counterparts to share some of the information in his possession about the new nuclear weapon that, according to Washington, Russia is working on. .

This is a development that would allow it to place an atomic warhead in space, something prohibited by the current international treaty on that domain, and that would allow it to cause a brutal disruption of all services linked to satellites.

Washington seeks the complicity of Beijing and New Delhi, with greater influence over Moscow, to avoid a new serious escalation by the Kremlin.

Below, a look at the development of this phase of rearmament in the most strategic regions, in a context in which the United States continues to be by far the country with the largest budget (about 900,000 million dollars), followed by China (about 220,000 million, almost double if evaluated at purchasing power parity).

Europe

The Munich Security Conference has recorded a veritable parade of statements from European politicians warning of the risks linked to Russia's aggressiveness and the prospect of victory for a Trump whose commitment to Ukraine and NATO is dubious.

Since 2014, when the Kremlin annexed Crimea, Europe began to reverse what the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, defined as a time of “silent disarmament.”

The increase in defense spending has accelerated after the large-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In 2014, European NATO allies spent $235 billion, 1.47% of GDP.

In 2023, the figure rose to 347,000 (both calculated at constant 2015 prices), equivalent to 1.85% of GDP.

By 2024, 380,000 and 2% are expected, respectively, according to data published by the Atlantic Alliance.

In Munich, there were messages from leaders who believe it is necessary for Europe to do much more and very quickly, from Borrell himself to the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, or the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who announced the presentation in three weeks of a new defense industrial strategy and his intention to appoint a Defense Commissioner if he wins a new term in office.

The objective is to increase capabilities both to sustain Ukraine's resistance today and to have a strong deterrent capacity tomorrow against possible bad ideas from Putin, especially if Trump returns to power.

“The Russian threat is real.

Therefore, defense and deterrence must be credible,” Scholz summarized.

Germany, the EU's main economy, is fully aligned with that philosophy.

Two years ago, just three days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, Scholz announced Germany's biggest political shift since reunification, promising that his government would work to move the country toward a consistent military strengthening, after seven decades of different degrees of containment marked by the horror of the Nazi experience.

Germany has been increasing its level of military spending since then.

Overall, defense spending was around 60 billion euros, representing 1.57% of GDP.

“I am proud to be able to say that this year we will spend 2% of GDP on defense,” said Minister Boris Pistorius, referring to a threshold that is required by NATO.

“But I am realistic enough to see that this might not be enough in years to come,” he added.

This occurs while the Kremlin has turned Russia into a war economy, in which, according to data mentioned by several sources, a third of the state budget is used to support the invasion of Ukraine.

Pacific Asia

In the Asia-Pacific region, the vectors that drive spending are multiple.

On the one hand, the constant growth of China, which, hand in hand with its long economic boom, promotes a constant improvement and expansion of its military capabilities.

These increases, together with approaches that arouse misgivings in the region, have promoted an increase in the efforts of other countries in the area, such as Japan or Australia.

On the other hand, the rhetoric and actions of North Korea, which has recently removed from its Constitution the traditional goal of peaceful reunification of the peninsula, represent another factor spurring spending, pushing the South, a major economy, to remain in a very high state of alert.

Middle East

This region also has signs of heading into an arms race amid the brutal conflict between Hamas and Israel and the inflammatory effect it has had on a traditionally tense region.

Israel is a nuclear power that has received very strong military support from the United States for decades.

Saudi Arabia has been embarking on a military strengthening project for years that has led it to be the sixth country in the world in defense spending (when it is 19th by GDP size).

Iran does not have the economic muscle to be a significant actor in quantitative terms, but it has long cultivated the development of asymmetric capabilities that allow it to influence the region.

The conflict between Israel and the United States, on the one hand, and Iran's partners in the region—triggered in recent weeks by Washington's bombings in Yemen, Syria and Iraq—has the potential to spur different actors to fully prepare for possible escalations. runaway

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