Spending on armaments, here are the states that invest more (and less)
Sipri estimates indicate the value of the arms market at 1.981 billion dollars, which signals growth in real terms of 2.6% compared to 2019. Obama-Trump comparison in the USA
The highest military spending ever falls in the year of the health emergency. Nobody would bet on it. Yet this is what happened in 2020 in most of the main countries in the world, including Italy.
This was taken over by the SIPRI of Stockholm, one of the most important world thinkers in the sector in the annual “Trends in World Military Expenditure”, which since 1988 has been monitoring the resources globally allocated to armaments.
Sipri estimates indicate the value of this market at 1,981 billion dollars, which indicates growth in real terms of 2.6% compared to 2019 and 9.3% compared to ten years ago. That is 2.4% of world gross domestic product compared to 2.2% recorded the previous year.
Leading the ranking, as always so far, is the United States of America with an expenditure of 778 billion dollars, which means + 4.4% on 2019 but -10% on 2011. A figure that testifies how the years of presidency of the Republican Donald Trump were much less prone to the "stars and stripes" military-industrial complex than those of Democratic predecessor Barack Obama. If in 2020 Washington's spending on armaments absorbed 3.7% of US GDP, in fact, in 2011 it cut out a slice equal to 4.8%.
Behind the US, in the ranking of the world's largest military spenders is China (with an estimated 252 billion, because Beijing is scarce in official news on this front), marking a 1.9% growth. Then India, Russia and the United Kingdom appear, the latter a new entry in the top five: in 2020 London overtook Saudi Arabia, which fell to sixth place. In seventh place Germany, which in turn steals the place from France, then Paris, Japan and South Korea. Italy remains 11th. Our country is followed by Australia, Canada (which rises from 14th to 13th position), Israel (previously 16th) and Brazil (which loses two steps). The entry of Israel in the top fifteen places forcing Turkey to leave, slipping to 16th place.
Among the top 15 of 2019, only three countries show a drop in spending in 2020: Saudi Arabia (-10%), Turkey (-5%) and Brazil (-3.1%). On the contrary, Italy (+ 7.5%), Australia (+ 5.9%), Germany (+ 5.2%), South Korea (+ 4.9%) and the USA (+ 4.4%) are placed. . The result of 2020, however, is not always linear with respect to the trend of the decade.
Between 2011 and 2020 among the big military spenders on the highest podium is Turkey (+ 77%), followed by China (+ 76%), South Korea (+ 41%), India (+ 34%), Germany (+ 2.8%). There is no shortage of retreats. They involve three countries: USA (-10%), United Kingdom (-4.2%) and Italy, with a decrease of 3.3% but a change from 1.5 to 1.6% in reference to domestic product gross, an indication of a crisis that in the medium term has not only involved defense and security expenses but the entire Italian socio-economic system. Unless 2020 marks a profitable turnaround.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/spesa-per-armamenti-ecco-gli-stati-che-investono/ on Mon, 26 Apr 2021 13:55:21 +0000.