“Unprecedented since the Cold War”: record increase in military spending in Europe

2023-04-24 10:20:21

Never has the armaments sector been so healthy for 30 years. Military spending in Europe will rise again in 2022 to its level at the end of the Cold War, boosted by the war in Ukraine, according to a benchmark report published on Monday. They reached 480 billion dollars in 2022, after having already increased by more than a third in ten years.

Across continents, military spending hit a new high of $2.24 trillion last year, or 2.2% of global GDP, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri). . This is, on a global scale, the eighth consecutive year of increase for investments in the armies.

“They are pulled by the war in Ukraine, which is pushing up European budgets, but also by the unresolved and growing tensions in East Asia” between China on the one hand and, on the other, the United States and their Asian allies, said researcher Nan Tian, ​​one of the co-authors of the study, to AFP.

The Old Continent spent, after deducting inflation, 13% more on its armies in a year marked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to the report. This is both the strongest growth recorded for more than 30 years, and the return – in constant dollars – to the level of expenditure of 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall. “It’s unheard of since the end of the Cold War,” says Nan Tian.

The trend will accelerate

Ukraine alone increased its spending sevenfold to $44 billion – a third of its GDP. And this without counting several tens of billions of armament donations from abroad, specifies the Sipri. Russian spending has increased by 9.2%, according to his estimates.

“But even if you remove the two warring nations, spending in Europe has increased significantly,” Nan Tian points out. And the trend should continue to accelerate in the next decade. We could “potentially” see growth levels similar to 2022 for several years, estimates the Sipri researcher.

After falling considerably in the 1990s, global military spending had been on the rise since the 2000s. It had been initially driven by major investments by China in its army, then by renewed tensions with the Russia after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

France, 8th in the ranking

The United States alone accounted for 39% of global spending last year. With China, number 2 (13%), they represent more than half of the world’s military investments. The following, Russia (3.9%), India (3.6%) and Saudi Arabia (3.3%) come far behind.

“China is investing heavily in its naval forces, to increase its reach to Taiwan obviously and beyond to the South China Sea,” continues Nan Tian. Opposite, Japan, but also Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and further afield Australia, are trying to keep up.

The United Kingdom is the first European in sixth place (3.1% of the world total) ahead of Germany (2.5%) and France (2.4%). Figures that include donations to Ukraine. The United Kingdom, second donor behind the United States, “traditionally spends more than Germany and France and has also given more than Germany and France”, specifies the researcher.

In Europe, countries such as Poland, the Netherlands and Sweden are among those which have increased their military investments the most over the past decade. Modern but very expensive armaments, such as the American F-35 fighter plane, also explain certain jumps in expenditure, as for Finland, which acquired 64 aircraft last year.