[ World military expenditure in 2020 is estimated to have been
$1981 billion, the highest level since 1988 — and world military
expenditure in 2020 was 2.6 per cent higher in real terms than in 2019
and 9.3 per cent higher than in 2011.] [[link removed]]

AMIDST PANDEMIC AND ECONOMIC SUFFERINGS, 2020’S GLOBAL MILITARY
SPENDING REACHED HIGHEST LEVEL IN DECADES  
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Countercurrents Collective
April 27, 2021
CounterCurrents
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_ World military expenditure in 2020 is estimated to have been $1981
billion, the highest level since 1988 — and world military
expenditure in 2020 was 2.6 per cent higher in real terms than in 2019
and 9.3 per cent higher than in 2011. _

Sagal News (Somalia),

 

Military spending around the world has increased to unprecedented
level since 1988 despite economic suffering due to the COVID-19
pandemic, and the U.S. was ahead of all the countries again, finds
Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2020, the latest report by the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

In 2020, nations were struggling to support their economies through
the times of hardships and lockdowns caused by the pandemic. Those
efforts apparently did not prevent governments from spending more
money on their militaries than ever before in more than three decades,
the report said.

The report published on Monday said: World military expenditure in
2020 is estimated to have been $1981 billion, the highest level since
1988 — the earliest year for which SIPRI has a consistent estimate
for total global military spending, and world military expenditure in
2020 was 2.6 per cent higher in real terms than in 2019 and 9.3 per
cent higher than in 2011.

It said that over the last decade, global military spending increased
by almost 10 percent. The increase came in a year when the world’s
“gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 4.4 percent.” The global
military burden — world military expenditure as a share of global
GDP — rose by 0.2 percentage points in 2020, to 2.4 per cent.

It said the increase caused “the biggest year-on-year rise in the
military burden since the global financial and economic crisis in
2009.”

Still, some countries, like South Korea and Chile, preferred to spend
some of the planned military funds on pandemic response while others,
like Russia and Brazil, spent “considerably less” on defense then
planned in 2020.

SPIRI said U.S. leads the list of the largest military spenders by a
wide margin. U.S.’s military expenditures amounted to 39% of the
global defense spending. U.S. also recorded one of the highest
spending growth rates among the top 10 military spenders, surpassed
only by Germany and South Korea, which have considerably smaller
defense budgets.

China, closest “competitor” of U.S., spent around three times less
money on defense and its military spending in 2020 accounted for some
13 percent of the global tally. Beijing did not have to raise its
defense spending at the expense of increasing the military burden,
since its economy was one of the few still growing in 2020.

India, Russia and the UK also made it to the list of the top five
military spenders, although their defense budgets were considerably
smaller than those of China, not to mention the U.S. Saudi Arabia was
the only nation among the top 10 military spenders that had its
defense expenditures decreased in 2020.

The economic downturn coupled with the continuous increases in
military spending helped some NATO members to hit the Alliance’s
spending target as 12 member-states spent two or more percent of their
GDP on defense, SIPRI notes, adding that only nine did so in 2019.
France was particularly the one to cross the two-percent threshold for
the first time since 2009.

The report by Diego Lopes da Silva (Brazil), Researcher with the SIPRI
Arms and Military Expenditure Program, Nan Tian (South Africa), Senior
Researcher and Alexandra Marksteiner (Austria/Germany), Assistant
Researcher with the program, said: The Fact Sheet highlights the
regional and national military expenditure data for 2020 and trends
over the decade 2011–20. The data is from the updated open-access
SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, which provides military spending
data by country for the years 1949–2020.

TOP 15 MILITARY SPENDERS IN 2020

The report said: Military expenditure by the top 15 countries reached
$1603 billion in 2020 and accounted for 81 per cent of global military
spending. There were some changes in the composition and rank order of
the top 15 between 2019 and 2020. Most notably, Israel entered the top
15 in place of Turkey, and the UK moved above Saudi Arabia — whose
military spending fell by 10 per cent — to become the fifth largest
spender in 2020.All but three countries in the top 15 had higher
military expenditure in 2020 than in 2011. The exceptions were the
U.S. (–10 per cent), the UK (–4.2 per cent) and Italy (–3.3 per
cent). China’s increase in military spending of 76 per cent was by
far the largest among the top 15 over the decade 2011–20. Other top
15 countries with substantial increases between 2011 and 2020 were
South Korea (41 per cent), India (34 per cent), Australia (33 per
cent) and Israel (32 per cent).

U.S.

With a military budget of an estimated $778 billion, the U.S. remained
the world’s largest spender in 2020, accounting for 39 per cent of
global military spending. In 2020, the U.S. spent almost as much on
its military as the next 12 largest spenders combined. The U.S.
military burden amounted to 3.7 per cent of GDP in 2020, up by 0.3
percentage points on the previous year. U.S. military expenditure in
2020 was 4.4 per cent higher than in 2019. The 2020 financial year was
the third consecutive year of growth in U.S. military spending,
following continuous real-terms decreases between 2010 — when U.S.
spending peaked — and 2017. The increases in the financial years
covering 2018–20 can be attributed to focused investment in research
and development, and implementation of several long-term projects such
as modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal and large-scale arms
procurement. The main drivers of the increases in recent years were
perceived threats to the U.S. from strategic competitors such as China
and Russia and the push by former U.S. President Donald J. Trump to
build up what he saw as a depleted military.

CHINA

It said: China, the world’s second largest military spender in 2020,
is estimated to have accounted for 13 per cent of the global total.
The $252 billion spent on the military in 2020 was 1.9 per cent higher
than in 2019 and amounted to 1.7 per cent of GDP. China’s military
expenditure has increased for 26 consecutive years. This growth is the
result of China’s long-term military modernization and expansion
process. According to China’s Ministry of National Defense, the
increase in 2020 was in part motivated by perceived threats to
China’s national security related to ‘power politics’.

INDIA

The report said: At $72.9 billion, India’s military spending in 2020
was 2.1 per cent higher than in 2019 and 34 per cent higher than in
2011. This increase can be largely attributed to India’s ongoing
conflict with Pakistan over Kashmir and renewed border tensions with
China, as well as India’s more general rivalry with China as the
main regional power in Asia and Oceania.

RUSSIA

The SIPRI report said: Russia’s military expenditure was $61.7
billion in 2020, 2.5 per cent higher than in 2019 and 26 per cent
higher than in 2011. The increases in Russian spending in 2019 and
2020 followed decreases in 2017 and 2018. Before 2017, Russia’s
military spending had risen for 18 straight years. Although Russia’s
military spending grew overall in 2020, the economic consequences of
the Covid-19 pandemic appeared to have an immediate impact: Russia’s
actual military spending in 2020 was 6.6 per cent lower than its
initial military budget.

NATO

It said: Military expenditure by North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) members totaled $1103 billion in 2020. Six of the top 15
military spenders are members of NATO: the U.S., the UK, Germany,
France, Italy and Canada.

Together, these six accounted for 90 per cent ($995 billion) of total
NATO spending and 50 per cent of global military expenditure.

It added: Among the top 15 spenders, the military burden increased
between 2019 and 2020 in all countries except China. The GDPs of
almost all the countries in the world decreased in 2020 largely
because of the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. In most
countries, this led to an increase in the military burden irrespective
of whether their military spending rose or fell in 2020. The most
notable increases in military burden among the top 15 spenders in 2020
included Saudi Arabia (+0.6 percentage points), Russia (+0.5
percentage points), Israel (+0.4 percentage points) and the USA (+0.3
percentage points).

REGIONAL TRENDS

The report said: World military expenditure is heavily concentrated in
two of the world’s five regions: in 2020, the Americas (43 per cent)
and Asia and Oceania (27 per cent) together accounted for more than
two-thirds of the global total. Europe accounted for 19 per cent of
global military expenditure in 2020, making it the third largest
spending region. Africa had the smallest regional share, accounting
for 2.2 per cent of global military expenditure. Military spending in
the Middle East is estimated to have accounted for roughly 9.0 per
cent of the world total in 2020 based on the limited data available
for this region.

MIDDLE EAST

It said: Five of the 10 countries with the highest military burdens in
the world are in the Middle East: Oman, which spent 11 per cent of its
GDP on the military, Saudi Arabia (8.4 per cent), Kuwait (6.5 per
cent), Israel (5.6 per cent) and Jordan (5.0 per cent). The other five
are Algeria (6.7 per cent), Azerbaijan (5.4 per cent), Armenia (4.9
per cent), Morocco (4.3 per cent) and Russia (4.3 per cent).

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