The world’s military spending rose for the ninth consecutive year to an all-time high of US$2.44 trillion (RM11.67 trillion) in 2023, an increase of 6.8% over the previous year.
And to show how fraught nations have become over impending wars, military expenditure has risen in all regions of the world – Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania, Europe, and the Middle East.
According to the latest data released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) on Monday, the three largest spenders on weapons were the United States, China and Russia. Significant increases were also recorded in Europe, Asia and Oceania, and the Middle East.
As always, the US splurged the most at US$916bil (over RM4 trillion) or 37% share of the world total. China came in second with US$296bil (over RM1 trillion) or 12% while Russia outlaid US$109bil (RM520.8bil) or 4.5%.
“The unprecedented rise in military spending is a direct response to the global deterioration in peace and security. States are prioritising military strength, but they risk an action–reaction spiral in the increasingly volatile geopolitical and security landscape,“ said Nan Tian, senior researcher of Sipri’s military expenditure and arms production programme.
The figures are indeed insane if compared with the paltry US$6.1bil (RM29bil) allocated for the United Nations’ fund for peacekeeping operations from last year to June 2024.
There is no doubt that the planet has become a powder keg that could go off at any moment. Just last week, the world heaved a sigh of relief after a potential trigger to World War III was averted in the Middle East.
Hostilities between Israel and Iran rose to the highest-ever levels after Israel reportedly used drones and, conceivably, a missile, to attack Iran on April 19. It was in retaliation for the first ever large-scale military operation by the Islamic republic against Israel on April 13.
The latest round of heightened tension began with an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, the capital of Syria, on April 1.
The strike, which Iran said was a violation of its sovereignty, killed 13 people, including two top generals of the Quds force, the overseas wing of Iran’s elite Republican Guards (IRGC), and five other senior officers.
Teheran warned that it would react forcefully, and did so on April 13 by firing multiple waves of drones and missiles at Israel. Most were intercepted, but several missiles caused damage, including one that struck an Israeli air base.
While the Western media claimed that an Israeli missile struck many targets, including an Iranian airbase, during its tit-for-tat strike on April 19, the country’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, mocked the attack, describing the drones deployed as “children’s toys” that were easily shot down.
According to a New York Times report on Monday, Israel had planned a “much more extensive” counter-strike on Iran but was coerced into toning down the operation by the US, the United Kingdom and Germany, which exerted “concerted diplomatic pressure” on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It said the eventual response “avoided significant damage, diminishing the likelihood of an escalation”.
But the possibility of a much wider war in the region, which could spread across the world, remains.
And it is certain that the death toll from Israel’s incessant onslaught in Gaza that has now spilled over into Rafah and the Russia-Ukraine war, which is already two months into its third year, is expected to rise exponentially.
Ukraine spent US$64.8bil (RM309.6bil) in 2023, making it the eighth largest military spender that year. It also received at least US$35bil (RM167.2bil) in military aid, including US$25.4bil (RM119.4bil) from the US.
Last Saturday, after four months of delays, the US House of Representatives passed a US$60.8bil (RM290.5bil) aid Bill for Ukraine.
However, as House Speaker Mike Johnson revealed in the breakdown of the figure, only about US$12bil to $14bil (RM57.5bil to RM66.8bil) would be used to provide weapons.
Will it be enough to turn the tide of the war in its favour? With Ukraine facing acute shortages of artillery shell and air defence ammunition, in addition to failing morale, experts, including those in the mainstream media, have serious doubts.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the new US aid package was unlikely to radically change Ukraine’s situation on the battlefield
It noted that Ukrainian armed forces were facing a severe shortage of personnel and artillery shells at the front, after analysing the country’s “dire battlefield position” and the progress made by Russian forces in recent months.
Bloomberg also reported that the US could provide Ukraine with breathing room, but an actual shift on the battlefield remained distant.
It quoted Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies in Kiev, as saying that the question was whether there would be aid and in what volume of it next year and beyond because Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy was to wait it out.
According to David Pyne, a former US Department of Defence officer and executive vice-president of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, the allocated funds are “woefully insufficient”.
He said the money “will not change the outcome of the war, which will inevitably end with a Russian victory and Ukraine being forced to accept Russia’s peace terms”.
Pyne also pointed out the obvious beneficiaries – the US defence industries – noting that about 80% of the money allocated would go to them.
The thousands of soldiers and civilians killed in wars do not matter at all to the makers of weapons. They are the only winners.
Media consultant M. Veera Pandiyan likes this quote from Albert Einstein: “It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.” The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
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