War, fear of war spur global military spending to new record: SIPRI report

New high of $2.4 trillion is the ninth straight annual increase, suggesting the trend will continue, research institute says.

The world spent $2.4 trillion on military forces last year, the highest amount ever recorded by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

SIPRI has been monitoring military expenditures since 1949 and found in its annual report released on Monday that in 2023 they rose to 2.3 percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP) from 2.2 percent the year before.

It meant that every man, woman and child on the planet was taxed an average of $306 for military spending last year – the highest rate since the Cold War.

The increased spending exactly matched the global rate of inflation of 6.8 percent, so it doesn’t necessarily translate into greater military efficacy everywhere.

But as SIPRI said, spending was not evenly spread out because “world military expenditure is highly concentrated among a very small group of states”.

The United States remained the biggest spender at $916bn, representing 37 percent of the world’s military outlays. China came second with an estimated $296bn.

Russia was third at $109bn although SIPRI considers this an underestimation “due to the increasing opaqueness of Russian financial authorities since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022”.

India came fourth at $83.6bn.

The rate of increase in military spending was also uneven with European budgets ballooning due to the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine increased its defence spending by 51 percent to $64.8bn – not including $35bn in military donations from allies. That meant it was devoting 37 percent of its GDP and nearly 60 percent of all government spending to defence, SIPRI said.

Despite financial aid from