By Sims Nono Simabatu Mayele
Global military spending in 2020 is estimated at $1,981 billion, the highest level since 1988 – the first year for which the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has been compiling data on global military spending. In 2020 it was 2.6 percent higher in real terms than in 2019 and 9.3 percent higher than in 2011. The global military burden – global military spending as a percentage of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) – increased by 0.2 percentage points in 2020 to 2.4 percent. This increase occurred at a time when most countries of the world experienced severe economic downturns related to the Covid-19 pandemic (global domestic product shrunk by 4.4 percent). The 2021 edition of the annual Military Balance report, published by the UK International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), also mentions record global military spending. The IISS, on its part, estimates military spending at $1,830 billion last year, an increase in real terms of 3.9 percent “despite the coronavirus pandemic and the consequent contraction of the global economy”. As a share of GDP, this is the first time that, according to the IISS, it has moved just above the 2 percent mark, with most countries maintaining their military budgets despite the contraction of their economies caused by the policies to combat Covid-19. The rivalry between the United States and China has clearly driven spending upwards. The US defence budget jumped 6.3 percent in 2020, China’s 5.2 percent. The two states account for two-thirds of the increase in global spending. Washington remains by far the world leader, with a budget of $738 billion (up 6.3 percent, or 40.3 percent of global spending). Next came Beijing, with $193.3 billion (up 5.2 percent or 10.6 percent of the total). These two countries are therefore taking the lion’s share (although China’s budget only equals some 26 percent of the US budget).
According to the IISS, “[m]any countries have adjusted their military budgets to redirect funds to crisis aid or economic support measures”. “However, several others have simply reduced or deferred the increase in planned spending rather than reducing them”. The report also highlights the growth of China’s military capabilities, particularly in the navy, which is significantly expanding its fleet, marking Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. In Europe too, defence spending is on the rise (up 2 percent), particularly to deal with Russia, which has been seen as a growing threat since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, but many NATO members are still far from the target of spending 2 percent of their national GDP on the military by 2024, according to the IISS.
From increasing military spending to escalating a new nuclear arms race?
The nine nuclear-armed states spent just over 66.5 billion euros in 2019 to maintain or expand the nuclear weapon’s capacity, a budget that is up nearly 10 percent from 2018, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) said in 2019. According to the latter’s report, which is based on dozens of different sources, the 2019 envelope has grown by more than 6 billion euros in one year, in line with the increase in overall military spending. The United States still has nearly 5,550 of these weapons in its arsenal, and plans to spend more than $1 trillion to modernize virtually all of them, which would account for nearly half of the world’s spending on nuclear weapons. US President Joe Biden’s budget request for fiscal year 2022 reaches $753 billion in national security funding, an increase of 1.6 percent that includes $715 billion for the Department of Defense and $38 billion not earmarked for the Pentagon. Although the budget document does not specify where this money goes, much of it is traditionally linked to the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous agency of the Energy Department that manages nuclear warheads. One of the biggest issues facing the defence budget is nuclear spending, particularly around strategic ground deterrence and the replacement of US intercontinental ballistic missiles.
China’s military budget, the second largest in the world after that of the United States, grew by only 7.5 percent in 2019, a slowdown from the previous year. This growth rate is lower than in 2018 (it was 8.1 percent). Beijing had planned to spend 1,190 billion yuan ($177.6 billion / 156 billion euros) in 2019 on defence, about four times less than Washington, while the size of China’s military forces is higher than that of the Americans and China’s population is four times larger. While China’s spending has closely followed the country’s economic growth curve over the past 25 years, the investments also reflect China’s ambition for a “world-class army”.
According to the U.S. Department of Defense report on China to Congress in 2020, China’s military budget will grow even less… But it will still be in the order of 6.6 percent. In detail, the Chinese Army will therefore have a budget of 1,268 billion yuan [or 163 billion euros or 195 billion dollars]. This is an “official” figure, as the actual level of resources available to Chinese forces could be much higher. The 2020 report estimates that China will “at least double” its nuclear stockpile to about 400 warheads and strengthen its nuclear deterrent (but even if this is the case, China’s nuclear arsenal will only equal 7.3 percent of the US one). “New developments in 2019 also suggest that China intends to increase the peacetime readiness of its nuclear forces by adopting an alert launch posture with an expanded silo-based force”. China is also pursuing its own version of a nuclear triad, with air-launch ballistic missiles, in addition to ICBMs. Pentagon officials estimate that China will have 200 intercontinental missiles over the next five years.
The case of France is also significant. In July 2017, the National Assembly passed a Military Programming Act (MPA) for the period 2019-2025, which plans to spend 37 billion euros on nuclear forces. This MPA launches the design of a new generation of nuclear weapons systems that will be used until 2080 (or even 2090)! It should be noted that the budget of this MPA is up 60 percent compared to the previous law (2014-2019) which was then 23.3 billion euros. This budgetary leap is due to the modernization (operational maintenance of equipment) and the renewal (production of new weapons systems and delivery systems) of equipment. In the long run, more than six billion euros that will be spent annually (while the budget of the Justice Ministry is hardly a single billion). This amount will continue to grow, as the renewal process takes about 20 years.
The increasing tensions between the major powers and the recent actions of some nuclear-weapon States including Russia’s continued development of new nuclear weapons technology, the collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the UK’s decision to increase the ceiling on its nuclear warheads and the inability of the US and Russia to agree on further nuclear reductions beyond the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) – have made a number of observers sceptical of the prospects, if not the feasibility, of nuclear disarmament. North Korea’s advanced nuclear weapons programme and Iran’s expansion of its nuclear activities beyond the limits of the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan (JCPOA) add to the list of challenges.
Sometimes the numbers tell only part of the story, even when we talk about nuclear weapons. For example, the United Kingdom, which recently announced that it would increase the ceiling on its nuclear stockpile from 225 to 260 warheads. This decision – described in his government’s long-awaited Review of Security and Defence Policy, Global Britain in a Competitive Age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy has largely surprised nuclear policy experts and reversed decades of British cuts. In its Strategic Reviews published in 2010 and 2015, the UK had set a ceiling of 225 warheads and committed to reducing the ceiling on its stockpiles to 180 warheads by the mid-2020s. The new Integrated Review increases the country’s nuclear stockpile ceiling to 260 warheads, a potential increase of about 15 percent over current stock and 45 percent over the previous target. Every minute, the nuclear-armed states have invested more than 128,000 euros in this type of armament, ICAN deplores. “This is absurd”, says the organization’s director, Beatrice Fihn, who regrets that this funding has not been allocated instead to “protecting the health of their citizens”. According to ICAN estimates, US, British and French spending on nuclear weapons could have funded the annual salaries of tens of thousands of health workers in each country, more than 100,000 ICU beds for patients with Covid-19 and tens of thousands of respirators.
Militarization is accelerating at an alarming rate at a time when it is expected to be significantly reduced to meet the serious challenges facing humanity. The growing tensions between the nuclear powers and the disruptive potential of various technologies increase the nuclear risks, say Névine Schepers and Oliver Thränert in a study by the CSS in Zurich. The world is increasingly over-armed at the expense of peace. Huge amounts of resources to the military sector, leaving basic needs such as food, health, education, employment, and environmental challenges underfunded. The imbalance between defence and welfare and development budgets is striking in most countries. Yet, despite the global economic crisis and general public opinion opposed to war and militarization, there are a few real signs that governments are at this stage ready to make a radical change in spending priorities. In a report published on 15 March 2021, SIPRI notes that in early 2020, nine countries (United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea) had approximately 13,400 nuclear weapons, of which 3,720 were deployed with operational forces and about 1,800 remained on high alert. The rate of increase of such arsenals over the previous year is 4.4 percent. SIPRI explains the increase, among other things, with a renewal of the nuclear arsenal. Another reason is a sense of threat. Above all, as SIPRI expert Alexandra Marksteiner explains, there are “perceived fears by strategic competitors China and Russia”.
About the author:
Simabatu Mayele Sims Nono is a diplomat, researcher and expert on disarmament and arms control issues. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Centre for Research and Information on Disarmament and Security (CRIDS).
Email: mayelesimabatu@gmail.com
