Daily Sabah with agencies
April 24, 2023

Europe drives fresh record in worldwide military spending in 2022

SIPRI: World military expenditure reaches new record high as European spending surges

Military spending around the world reached a record high last year, driven by an increase in expenditure in Europe not seen since the end of the Cold War three decades ago…a leading conflict and armaments think tank said on Monday.

Worldwide military expenditure hit its eighth record as it rose by 3.7% in real terms in 2022 to $2.24 trillion, or 2.2% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP), the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in a statement.

“It’s driven by the war in Ukraine, (which is) driving European budget spending upwards, but also the unresolved and worsening tensions in East Asia between the U.S. and China,” researcher Nan Tian, one of the study’s co-authors, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Europe spent 13% more on its armies in 2022 than in the previous 12 months….

“This included multi-year plans to boost spending from several governments,” SIPRI Senior Researcher Diego Lopes da Silva said. “As a result, we can reasonably expect military expenditure in Central and Western Europe to keep rising in the years ahead.”

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The think tank said that the figure does not consider sharp inflation rates, which means actual spending was even higher.

That was the most substantial increase in more than 30 years, and a return, in constant dollars, to the level of spending in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell.

“In Europe, it is at its highest level since essentially the end of the Cold War,” Tian said.

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“Irrespective of whether you remove the two warring nations, European spending has still increased by quite a lot,” Tian said.

Spending in Europe, which totaled $480 billion in 2022, has already risen by a third in the past decade, and the trend is expected to continue and accelerate over the next decade.

Tian said the continent could “potentially” see growth levels similar to 2022 for several years.

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Britain is the top spender in Europe, coming in sixth place overall and accounting for 3.1% of global expenditures, ahead of Germany at 2.5% and France at 2.4% – figures which include donations to Ukraine.

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Countries like Poland, the Netherlands and Sweden were among the European countries that increased their military investments the most during the past decade.

Modern and costly weapons also explain some spending hikes, as in the case of Finland, which purchased 64 U.S. F-35 fighter jets last year.