Latest upsurge in military expenditure all over the World is an ominous sign

There is an upsurge in military expenditure all over the world which is spearheaded by the upsurge in Europe.

- BY PRABHAT PATNAIK

Of course there are different estimates of military expenditure, depending on what one includes under this heading. We shall, in what follows, take the estimates of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) for our analysis. According to SIPRI, while there has been an increase in real military spending each year for the last ten consecutive years, the increase in this spending in 2024 over the previous year, at 9.4 per cent, was the highest annual increase for any year since the end of the Cold War. The total global military expenditure in 2024 was as much as $ 2.718 trillion.

One can think of two obvious reasons behind this upsurge: the first is that the metropolitan empire led by the US is coming under increasing challenge, especially with the crisis of neoliberal capitalism that set in with the collapse of the housing bubble in the US; the second is the fact that the US is no longer willing to meet the lion's share of the burden of military spending for maintaining this empire, but would like its European partners to take over a part of this burden. With the aggressive increase in military spending by the imperialist powers because of these reasons, other countries have also been under pressure to increase their military spending in real terms, so that they do not get rolled over by the imperialist juggernaut.