US accounts for nearly 40% of global military spending
Speaking Security Newsletter | Note n°204 | 29 April 2023
If you find these notes useful, you can support this newsletter and SPRI, here.
New research by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute finds that global military spending reached $2.3 trillion in 2022, a 3.7 percent increase over 2021. European expenditures shot up 13 percent—the biggest year-to-year increase since the end of the Cold War. The usual suspects are the reason why military spending has grown (in real terms) every year since 2015, particularly the one responsible for over 39 percent of the worldwide total last year.
A question that should be asked in presidential debates but isn’t is what each candidate’s strategy is for reversing this upward spiral. Just give us the big picture, 30,000-foot view1 of your plan to solve this problem (and do you even see this as a problem?). And tell us how you think this ends if we continue on the current path.
^Alt text for screen readers: The United States spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. This chart has two columns: the solid light blue one on the left represents $877 billion in U.S. military spending; the column on the right is made up of ten blocks showing the military expenditures of the following countries: China, $292 billion; Russia, $86 billion; India, $81 billion; Saudi Arabia, $75 billion; United Kingdom, $68 billion; Germany, $56 billion; France, $54 billion; South Korea, $46 billion; Japan, $46 billion; Ukraine, $44 billion. Figures are for 2022 and are from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
-Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org)
Find this note useful? Please consider becoming a supporter of SPRI. Unlike establishment think tanks, we rely exclusively on small donations.
Or 9,144-meter view, for those of you who typically read measurements in Roman Catholic.