Financing Security

Intensifying great-power rivalries have made increased defense spending a priority that few states dare to question.

- Nilima Gulrajani

This growing sense of insecurity propelled global military spending, which increased by 37% from 2015 to 2024, when it reached $2.7 trillion - a sum almost equivalent to Africa's entire GDP.The NATO alliance accounted for over 50% of this spending, with most of its members investing more in defense at the expense of other public spending. In Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany, foreign aid has taken a hit. Tepid public support for such programming makes it politically expendable, while security anxieties and the search for a defense-industrial boom fuel military spending.

Yet surging military budgets have not improved global security. Instead, military investment increases instability, destroys ecosystems, fuels arms races, and heightens conflict risks. It can also indirectly crowd out public investment in a guns-versus-butter tradeoff. The financing gap for the non-climate-related Sustainable Development Goals would have easily been closed in 2024 if the increases in defense spending had been redirected for that purpose. And since sectoral investments in health, education, and energy infrastructure have larger “fiscal multipliers” than military spending, these investments would likely have boosted GDP by more than we can expect defense spending to.

Public investment in human capital and infrastructure builds resilience and makes it more likely that societies will resolve disputes without violence and displacement. Most countries’ biggest security risks are not territorial; they are threats like pandemics, climate change, and cyberterrorism. An aid-for-defense swap may be politically rational, but it amounts to robbing Peter (a resilience-based multidimensional understanding of security) to pay Paul (a narrow, militarized understanding).