ABSTRACT
Growth in global military expenditure is driven by an increasingly strained international security environment characterized by higher threat perceptions in all regions, major wars in the Middle East, severe political-strategic tensions between major military powers, large weapons modernization programmes in the Western hemisphere, persistent armed conflicts and civil unrest in the global south. Since 2014, global military expenditure has steadily increased and will likely continue to do so in the coming years. The rise in global spending is dominated by the combined expenditure of the top five largest spending countries in 2018, the US, China, France, the UK and Russia, which account for 60% of total military expenditure. At the regional level, military expenditure trends are often determined by one country per region, such as China in Asia or Algeria in Africa. However, drivers of increases and decreases of military expenditure at the regional and national levels are specific to each region and country’s situation. This chapter presents and discusses global, regional and national trends in military expenditure, their main drivers. It also discusses issues related to transparency in military expenditure and concludes with a critical analysis of militarism and military spending.
