Sibri Report 2020: Global military spending also increased during epidemics

Global military spending is expected to increase significantly in 2020 compared to the previous year. It goes from the Swedish annual survey Peace Research Institute Sibri Emerges. Accordingly, a total of US $ 1981 billion was invested in the military by 2020 worldwide. This is the highest since the beginning of the Sipri studies in 1988. In 2019, global military spending was $ 1.917 trillion.

“We can say with reasonable certainty that the epidemic will not have a significant impact on global military spending by 2020,” says Sibri researcher Diego Lopez da Silva. This can be seen, for example, in the role of military spending in global GDP. It is down 0.2 percentage points Has grown to 2.4 percent now.

$ 778 billion and an increase of 4.4 percent over the previous year United States The country with the highest military spending – they are responsible for only 39 percent of global defense spending. The defense budgets of the next twelve countries in the rankings are almost the same.

“The United States has primarily invested in the modernization of nuclear weapons, but has also acquired large quantities of conventional weapons, ships and warplanes,” says Alexandra Markssteiner of Sibri. On the one hand, this is due to the former president’s security policy Donald Trump, But also in the perceived threats from China Russia. As US military spending fell between 2010 and 2017, it has now risen for the third year in a row.

Wants to capture Beijing

China is trying to reduce backlinks. The Chinese defense budget has been growing steadily for 26 years. Of the $ 252 billion, China accounts for 13 percent of world military spending. “Beijing has been carrying out very expensive modernization projects for many years, especially in the maritime sector,” says Marksteiner.

Further In that event Spends more and more money on the military. With $ 72.9 billion, the country ranks third in the Sibri rankings. The defense budget increased by 2.1 percent. In addition to the rivalry with China, the Kashmir conflict is also seen as a reason for the continued escalation.

Russia has also increased its military spending – $ 61.7 billion, an increase of 2.5 percent compared to 2019. However, Russia spent 6.6 percent less money in 2020 than planned in the defense budget.

Preceded in fifth place England With $ 59.2 billion in military spending Saudi Arabia (57.5 billion). Despite the war Yemen The cost of the Arab kingdom has been declining for years. Sibri attributed the fall in oil prices.

Overall, the top five countries in the Sibri survey accounted for 62 percent of global arms spending.

German military spending continues to grow

Germany Sibri ranks seventh in the rankings with $ 52.8 billion in military spending. According to Marxsteiner, this is the highest value since 1993. In the previous year it was almost 50 billion. German military spending has been rising since 2015.

As of 2019, Germany is showing strong growth (5.2 percent) in the top ten countries. According to Marxsteiner, this is due, among other things, to the security policy of the Union and Donald Trump. The former US president was already under great pressure Washington And increased again for military spending. However, Trump has repeatedly warned that Germany is still a long way from NATO’s target of spending two percent of its economic output on defense. According to Sibri, German military spending accounted for 1.4 percent of GDP by 2020.