World military spending grew in 2022 to an all-time high of $2,240 billion. The region of Eastern Europe saw the sharpest rise in spending, driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Military expenditure in Europe saw its steepest year-on-year increase since the end of the Cold War, up 13 percent, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI, said on Monday.
However, military aid to Ukraine and concerns about a heightened threat from Russia strongly influenced many other states’ spending decisions, as did tensions in East Asia.
“The continuous rise in global military expenditure in recent years is a sign that we are living in an increasingly insecure world,” said Dr Nan Tian, Senior Researcher with SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme. “States are bolstering military strength in response to a deterorating security environment, which they do not foresee improving in the near future.”
Military expenditure by states in Central and Western Europe totalled $345 billion in 2022.
Russian military spending grew by an estimated 9.2 percent in 2022 to around $86.4 billion --equivalent to 4.1 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022, up from 3.7 per cent of GDP in 2021.
Ukraine’s military spending reached $44.0 billion in 2022. At 640 percent, this was the highest single-year increase in a country’s military expenditure recorded in SIPRI data. As a result of the rise and the war-related damage to Ukraine’s economy, the military burden (military spending as a share of GDP) shot up to 34 percent of GDP in 2022, from 3.2 percent in 2021.
