Global military spending reached a record high in 2023, with the US leading the way

• Global military spending rose to the highest level on record in 2023, analysts said.
• The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said the spike was the steepest increase since 2009.
• Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania saw particularly large increases, the report said.

Global military spending rose 6.8% in real terms to $2.443 billion in 2023 – the highest level on record, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

SIPRI published its annual report on global military spending trends on Monday, describing last year’s spike as the “steepest year-on-year increase” since 2009.

And the trend is truly global.

In all five geographic regions defined by the institute, military spending increased for the first time since 2009, with Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania posting particularly large increases, the report said.

According to the International Crisis Group, global conflicts have been on the rise since around 2012, with fighting simmering, erupting or expanding in recent years in Ukraine, Gaza, Ethiopia and Myanmar – to name a few.

This in turn has increased military spending.

Nan Tian, ​​a senior researcher at SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Program, said the “unprecedented” increase in defense spending was in direct response to the “global deterioration in peace and security”.

“States are prioritizing military strength, but they risk an action-reaction spiral in the increasingly volatile geopolitical and security landscape,” he said.

In fact, military spending has increased so much that global spending per person reached $306 in 2023, SIPRI reported.

The institute cited Russia’s military spending, which it said has risen 24% to an estimated $109 billion in 2023. It also highlighted Ukraine, which ranks eighth in total defense spending, following an increase of 51% year-on-year.

Lorenzo Scarazzato, a SIPRI researcher, said two years of Russia’s war in Ukraine had fundamentally changed the security outlook for Europe’s NATO states.

He added that NATO’s target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense is now seen “as a baseline rather than a threshold to reach.”

Eleven of NATO’s 31 members met or exceeded the threshold by 2023, the highest number since the agreement was concluded in 2014, according to SIPRI.

The US, meanwhile, retained its position as the world’s largest defense spender, with military spending rising 2.3% to $916 billion in 2023, according to the institute.

This is far more than China, the world’s second largest military spender, said the country, which spent an estimated $296 billion on defense in 2023, an increase of 6%.

At the same time, Israel saw its defense spending increase by 24% to $27.5 billion in 2023, mainly due to the large-scale offensive in Gaza, the SIPRI report shows.