Recent Trends in World Spending
United States Military Spending
Is Current U.S. Spending Justified?
How World Military Spending Could be Better Used
History to the Situtaion Today:
The peak of worldwide military spending occurred during World War II because every superpower of the time was using all of their economic resources to pay for the war. The second highest level was in 1985 during the Cold War, when military expenditures reached an estimated 1.2 trillion dollars due to heavy weapon build-up and large sums of money being spent on military technology. Once the Cold War ended global defense funding steadily dropped for nearly a decade, from 1988 to 1998. After 1998 global military spending slightly increased, but at a small rate. In 2002 it began to dramatically increase when it rose 6.5 percent in real terms. Then in 2003 it rose an additional 11 percent. [1] This rapid growth has caused total spending to escalate to 956 billion dollars for 2004 and threaten to once again break the one trillion dollar barrier in 2005. The interesting thing about the recent increases in defense spending is that they have coincided with a decrease in the number of conflicts worldwide. According to a prominent European think tank, in 2003 global conflicts fell to 19, the second lowest in 35 years, but global military expenditures rose to their highest levels since the end of the Cold War.[6]
The cause of this phenomenon is the United States and its War on Terror. In the past military spending was used to protect a nation from threats from other nations. When the Cold War ended there were no major threats to security for most nations so global military spending dropped. After the United States was attacked on September 11, 2001 the world realized that terrorists also pose a threat to security. Although almost all countries have raised their defense funding since 9/11, none have done so on the scale that the U.S. has. The main reason global military spending has grown so rapidly is because of the money the United States has spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. accounts for 47% of the world’s military spending, so its increase in national military funding has greatly affected the total international amount. [2] For example, if you remove the money the U.S. has spent on the war on terror, world military spending in 2003 would have only increased by 4 percent, not the actual 11 percent. [1] Therefore, the rising global expenditures are due to the United States and the dominance it has on overall military spending.
Military Spending as % of GDP:
United States military spending is much higher than the rest
of the world. This seems to imply
that the U.S. is allocating more of its money to the military than
other countries.
However, this is not necessarly true. If we compare military spending
to GDP, we see that many countries use a larger percent of their
resources
on
the
military than the U.S. does.
This graph shows us that many countries dedicate more of their budget to the military than the United States. The U.S. was the actually 17th on the countries that spent the highest % of their GDP on the military. [1] This show that spending a lotof money towards your defense is not unique to the United States.
Military Spending in High-Income Countries vs. Low-Income Countries
High Income Countries contribute most to global military spending, because they have the resources to do so. High-income countries account for about 75 percent of world military spending but only 16 percent of the population. [2] Low-income countries on the other hand don't have lots of money to spend on the military. However, out of the money they do have they typically spend a larger percent of it on the military than developed countries. Of the 16 countries who spent more of their GDP on the military in 2002 that the U.S, 12 of them were developing countries. Therefore, military spending is an important issue to examine in all economic regions.