Military Spending Has Almost Doubled Since the Early 90s

Global military expenditure has nearly doubled since the early 90s. According to the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, the costs attributed to defense equipment, personnel, operations and maintenance came to nearly $1.3 billion in 1993 and rose to nearly $2.4 billion in 2023.

The region of Asia and Oceania is the main driver of this change, having increased spending by 277 percent between 1993 and 2023. Meanwhile, in Africa and the Middle East, defense spending increased by 154 percent in the same time period. As this chart shows though, even with this growth, the Americas region still had the highest spending in 2023 at $967 billion. In Europe, military spending was far higher in 2023 than in 1993, 2003 or 2013. This is attributed primarily to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

According to SIPRI, The biggest defense spenders in 2023 were the United States ($916 billion or 37 percent of the world total), China ($296 billion or 12 percent), Russia ($109 billion or 4.5 percent), India ($83.6 billion or 3.4 percent) and Saudi Arabia ($75.8 billion or 3.1 percent). Ukraine became the eighth largest military spender in 2023, at $64.8 billion (2.7 percent of global spending).