2,240,000,000,000 Dollars! That's how much countries spent on buying weapons in 2022
Regionally, Europe saw the largest increase in spending at 13 per cent related to the war in Ukraine and long-term concerns about Russian aggression. Girish Linganna reports
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FollowGlobal military spending rose 3.7 per cent to a 'record high' of $2.24 trillion last year, according to a report released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Stockholm on Thursday.
Regionally, Europe saw the largest increase in spending at 13 per cent related to the war in Ukraine and long-term concerns about Russian aggression. "While a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 will certainly affect military spending decisions in 2022, concerns about Russian aggression have persisted for longer," Lorenzo Scarazzato, a researcher at SIPRI's Military Spending and Arms Production Program, said in a statement.Â
Since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, military spending in many former Eastern Bloc countries has more than doubled.
Central and Western European countries' combined spending of $345 billion is also the first time they exceeded spending levels in 1989, the last year of the Cold War. SIPRI also noted that the $345 billion figure is 30 per cent higher than spending in 2013.
The countries with the largest increase in Europe were NATO's newest member Finland (up 36 per cent), Lithuania (up 27 per cent), Sweden (up 12 per cent) and Poland (up 11 per cent). Great Britain has the largest military expenditure among Central and Western European countries at 68.5 billion dollars. An estimated $2.5 billion of that went to military aid to Ukraine.
Unsurprisingly, Ukraine itself experienced a huge increase. Ukraine's defence spending will reach $44 billion by 2022, a jump of 640 per cent, the largest one-year increase ever recorded in SIPRI data, the report said. Military expenditures in the war-torn country will also increase rapidly from 3.2 per cent of GDP in 2021 to 34 per cent in 2022.
By contrast, Russia's defence spending is estimated to have risen to $86.4 billion this year, an increase of about 9.2 per cent. The figures also represent 4.1 per cent of Moscow's gross domestic product (GDP), a slight increase of 0.4 per cent compared to 2021. Based on the data published by Russia for the "end of 2022", SIPRI calculated that the country's defence expenditures are 34 per cent higher than planned in the 2021 budget.
The discrepancy between Russia's budget plans and its actual military spending in 2022 suggests that the invasion of Ukraine cost Russia much more than it anticipated, says Lucie Bereau-Sudreau, director of SIPRI's Military Spending and Arms Production Program.
Across the ocean, the United States continues to spend more on defence than any other country, with the Pentagon spending $877 billion last year, three times more than China and accounting for 39 per cent of global military spending. SIPRI added that real US consumption growth of 0.7 per cent in 2022 would have been much higher if inflation had not reached its highest level since 1981.
The increase in spending was largely due to Washington's 'unprecedented' economic and military aid to Ukraine.
Elsewhere, military spending in Asia and Oceania continued to rise, with countries in the region spending $575 billion, up 2.7 per cent from 2021.
SIPRI added that China is the second largest international defence spender after the United States, with an "estimated" allocation of $292 billion for 2022. Beijing's latest increase is a 4.2 Â per cent increase over 2021.Â
India's military expenditure stood at $81.4 billion, the fourth largest in the world. 6 per cent increase compared to 2021.
Japan's annual defence spending rose 5.9 per cent to $46 billion, the last time seen in 1960, driven by the need to combat imminent threats from China, North Korea and Russia.
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