The Global Military Condition

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has released its annual yearbook for 2008, a collection of statistics and studies of global military activity. The Yearbook summery, which gives all the relevant statistics worth a look can be downloaded here. While there is plenty of information, the highlight we noted in particular is for military expenditures. First the global expenditures:

World military expenditure is estimated to have been $1339 billion in 2007—a real-terms increase of 6 per cent over 2006 and of 45 per cent since 1998. This corresponded to 2.5 per cent of world gross domestic product (GDP) and $202 for each person in the world.

The subregion with the highest increase in military expenditure over the 10-year period 1998-2007 was Eastern Europe, at 162 per cent. It was also the region with the highest increase in 2007, at 15 per cent. Russia, with a 13 per cent increase in 2007, accounted for 86 per cent of this regional increase.

And the focus on the United States:

The USA’s military spending accounted for 45 per cent of the world total in 2007, followed by the UK, China, France and Japan, with 4-5 per cent each. Since 2001 US military expenditure has increased by 59 per cent in real terms, principally because of massive spending on military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also because of increases in the ‘base’ defence budget. By 2007, US spending was higher than at any time since World War II. However, because of the growth of the US economy and of total US Government spending, the economic and financial burden of military spending (i.e. its share of GDP and of total US Government outlays) is lower now than during previous peak spending years in the post-World War II period.

Some perspective. The GDP of the United States is 4.25x that of China, 5x that of the UK, and 5.5x more than France. Comparing the GDP of the US and China, the difference is around 10 trillion dollars annually.

Click the image to view the top 15 listed in order according to annual military expenditures.