-Analysis-
PARIS — There’s an extremely reliable barometer of international tensions: arms spending. SIPRI, the independent Stockholm-based institute that collects data from all over the world, published its annual report Monday — not surprisingly, 2023 arms spending numbers exploded to new record highs.
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In total, governments spent 2.3 trilllion euros, a 6% increase over 2022, the highest growth recorded by SIPRI in over a decade. Above all, the institute notes that, for the first time, spending jumps were registered on all five continents, and not just countries at war. In fact, it counted 56 conflicts worldwide, not just the two that dominate the geopolitical agenda.
Diving into the massive database of this 60-year-old institute, the research puts these expenditures into sharp perspective. For example, as a percentage of national wealth, the peak of defense spending in the United States, the world leader, dates back to 1952, at 13.9% of GDP. We were in the midst of the Korean War, the Iron Curtain had risen across Europe, and everyone was preparing for a war that, at the time, we weren’t sure would remain “cold.”
Budgets worldwide
Spending is considerably lower in percentage terms today: again for the United States, it fell between 6% and 8% during the Vietnam War, then to 5% in 1992, after the dissolution of the USSR, when George Bush, father, spoke of a coming “peace dividend.” In 2023, the United States devoted 3.9% of its GDP to defense, the highest budget in absolute terms in view of its national wealth; but this is less, in percentage terms, than China, and above all Russia, which is at almost 6%.
Some countries have accelerated, convinced that war is closing in on them, such as Poland, which is devoting the biggest percentage budget in the European Union, at 4% of its GDP, while Japan, long constrained by its constitution, is doubling its defense spending.
Numbers don’t tell the whole story.
France, which was at 7% in 1952 and remained at around 3% even after the end of the Algerian war, fell below 2% some 15 years ago. It has also risen again to reach the 2% target set by NATO.
New cycle of disruption
Numbers don’t tell the whole story. They do tell us about the tensions in the world and the use of force in international relations, symbolized to excess by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But they don’t mention the great leap forward in war technology, the extension of conflict to space, to the cyber domain, to the undersea world with its Internet cables. The figures do not mention the explosion of artificial intelligence, which can be used in weapons systems.
This is regrettable, as we remember the psychodrama of finding 0 billion to help the countries of the South finance their adaptation to climate change at the last COP. It won’t change a thing: the world has entered a new cycle of brutal disruption, and nations have stuck to the old Roman adage: si vis pacem, para bellum, “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
