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Global Military Spending Soars 45 Percent in 10 Years
STOCKHOLM - World military spending grew 45 percent in the past decade, with the United States accounting for nearly half of all expenditures, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said Monday.
Military spending grew six percent last year alone, according to SIPRI's annual report.
In 2007, 1,339 billion dollars (851 billion euros) was spent on arms and other military expenditures, corresponding to 2.5 percent of global gross domestic product, or GDP, and 202 dollars for each of the world's 6.6 billion people.
The United States spends by far the most towards military aims, dishing out 547 billion dollars last year, or 45 percent of global expenditure.
Britain, China, France and Japan -- the next in line of big spenders -- lag far behind, accounting for just four to five percent of world military costs each.
"The factors driving increases in world military spending include countries' foreign policy objectives, real or perceived threats, armed conflict and policies to contribute to multilateral peacekeeping operations, combined with the availability of economic resources," the SIPRI report said.
Registering the greatest regional growth was Eastern Europe, which saw its military spending skyrocket 162 percent between 1998 and 2007 and 15 percent from 2006 to 2007.
Russia, whose expenditures ballooned 13 percent last year, was responsible for 86 percent of the growth in the region, according to SIPRI.
North America meanwhile saw its military spending swell 65 percent, largely driven by the United States, which has seen its costs grow 59 percent since the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.
"By 2007, US spending was higher than at any time since World War II," the SIPRI report said.
In the past decade, the Middle East has boosted military expenditures by 62 percent, South Asia by 57 percent and Africa and East Asia by 51 percent each.
Western Europe was the region with the least military spending growth at just six percent, followed by Central America at 14 percent.
At a national level, "China has increased its military spending threefold in real terms during the past decade," SIPRI said, adding however that "due to its rapid economic growth, the economic burden of military spending is still moderate, at 2.1 percent of GDP".
As a direct result of the increased military outlay, sales by the world's 100 leading arms producing companies (excluding in China) jumped nearly nine percent in 2006 compared to the year before to 315 billion dollars, SIPRI said.
Sixty-three of the 100 top weapons firms are based in the United States and Western Europe, accounting alone for 292.3 billion dollars in sales in 2006, the last year for which SIPRI has numbers.
© 2008 Agence France Presse
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58 Comments so far
Show AllSad. The biggest spenders will be the biggest losers.
And how much more hunger is there, and lack of health care? Gee...
Are Americans supposed to be proud of this?
Only 45% in ten years? Cripes, Global Oil spending has increased more than that in only 10 months. Now THAT'S leverage!
How about Military Destruction? I bet that's up more than 45% in ten years. Deaths, too, I'll wager.
Hence the expression, "more bang for your buck!"
Hm, this article is from France. There's a country that makes a good living (irony intended - I should say, a killing) from the arms trade.
I can't decipher from the article if they're aware of monetary inflation. Everywhere, everyone is spending almost twice as much on almost everything as they were 10 years ago. Except cell phones, RAM, and plasma TVs, of course.
Quebec wants to separate from Canada. I'd quite like them to separate from the whole world, and take my family and friends and I with them when they go.
Here is one example of where your military tax dollars are spent.
After basic training, an American soldier attends a technical school for 16 weeks and learns how to repair sophisticated communications equipment. After two years he is an expert at his job and is sent to Iraq for 15 months. Does he perform his job in iraq?
No, He does not. In one of our "nice" Iraqi bases, he spends four weeks training a civilian to do HIS job. The civilian, from a foreign country, works for Halliburton. Halliburton has a multi-million dollar contract to repair the military radios in Iraq, which is just one of several "no-bid" contracts Halliburton has somehow managed to recieve.
Our highly trained soldier now stands guard duty for the following 14 months, while a poorly trained dude who may not even like America or Americans, is the radio repair technician and he only cares about his pay check. We are paying for this type of bullshit and no one stops it. That is just one example.
And the next ten years? And the next...and the next...and the next.
Big_Money June 9th, 2008 1:17 pm -- 'Quebec wants to separate from Canada. I'd quite like them to separate from the whole world, and take my family and friends and I with them when they go.'
Please don't wish for that. Quebec is the one province that can be relied upon to keep the rest of Canada slightly sane -- other than its sadly misguided support for NAFTA, that is. Somehow Mulroney persuaded them that he and his provincial pals were actually Quebeckers.
Besides guard duty, don't forget the sniper and IED lotteries, Kem. What a waste.
That seems like a lot of money spent to get people on the job that can't properly ground a water pump.
Who, exactly, got the money? Must be alot of stockholders somewhere that have nothing to be proud of.
Arvy...
"Please don't wish for that. Quebec is the one province that can be relied upon to keep the rest of Canada slightly sane "
Wow, that is a very astute observation, and a rare one to hear from someone writing in English. And I was calling myself the "sole anglophone soverignist".
The SPP made press in English Canada for about a whole week during the demonstrations...while it had been in the French press in Quebec for years.
While defending their own soverignty, Quebec has rather accidentily become the primary defender of Canadian Soverignty.
Jaguara
Thanks Kem
That is a good example of the military privatization going on.
The number of employees doing military work is never included in the often cited reports of 150,000 coalition forces in Iraq.
If troops still did the same duties as in the past, then we might realize how large our presence in Iraq is.
Private contractors also use taxpayer money with less trasparency and accountability.
Too bad income for the voter and taxpayer isn't "soaring" along with it!
@Jaguara: Thanks for the compliment. While I've never actually been fully persuaded by the narrow parochialism of the separatists, I can certainly agree that their soverignty ideals are not without merit in the broader context. And I always had a somewhat reluctant admiration for René Lévesque in his day. He seemed to me like that rarest of rarities -- an honest politician.
Arvy and Jaquara - I agree that Quebec has been a most sereptitiously positive influence on Canada of late, and I speak english. Thank heaven they're distinct and wield actual power.
It's just my pet theory about how millions of us can somehow escape this world where military spending is so big. It'll also cut 6 hours off the drive to Halifax, if you see what I mean.
Global family:
Sorry kids - I know you don't have food and water, but Dad has to buy guns and firecrackers and a Hummer and give money to his drunken friends.
Eisenhower warned us. Stay on message.
Oh you tell me that there's danger to this land you call your own
And you watch them build the war machine right beside your home
And you tell me that you're ready to go marching to the war
Oh I know you're set for fighting but what are you fighting for?
-Phil Ochs
We need guns.
So a child can sleep safely on their mat on a concrete floor.
So a family can live peacefully even though their home is in foreclosure.
Even though teachers have to spend their own money for classroom supplies.
So the elderly can die peacefully due to lack of decent medical care.
So we can walk in peace to our jobs because we can't afford to buy fuel.
So we don't have to worry about terrorists even though there aren't enough police to keep our neighborhoods safe.
So our bridges can collapse in a secure environment.
Soon the whole world will be 'safe'. Don't worry.
... Or these:
-- The rape of the American political system (not to mention the entire planet) by "The Big Boys," i.e., multinational drug, oil, bank, and insurance corporations. (I guess there aren't any women executives or black executives involved in any of those multinational corporations).
-- The ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor and the rich and the middle class in the United States; the largest gap of any advanced industrial country. By far.
... And the largest gap in the United States since 1929.
-- The fact that in the United States 45% of the nation's wealth is concentrated in the hands of 1% of the population; with the next 19% of the population controlling the next 40% of the nation's wealth -- leaving the remaining 15% in the hands of 80% of the US population.
Obama? McCain? Hillary? A sound? A tinkle? A titter?
How's 'bout these:
-- The fact that 50% of the world's population lives on $2 a day or less; with 20% of the world's population living on $1 a day or less.
-- The fact that 35,000 people die every day from *preventable* causes, most of them because of polluted drinking water.
-- The fact that scientists estimate that the cost of making virtually all the world's drinking water safe to drink would be around 10 billion dollars. Less than what the US spend in Iraq in a month.
-- The fact that the United States has the highest homicide rate of any advanced industrialized country. By far.
-- The fact that the United States has the dirtiest air of any advanced industrial country. By far.
Senator Obama? Senator McCain? Senator Clinton?
Nada.
Still, the senators: they're all honorable men ... and women.
But, strangely, not a peep. Not a word. Not a syllable. I wonder why (scratch, scratch).
But who knows, maybe we'll get lucky. Surely, they have said something about *these* issues:
-- The fact that the United States has the highest rate of corporate welfare of any advanced industrial country. By far. About 125 billion dollars per year.
-- The fact that the United States is one of the few advanced industrialized countries that doesn't have proportional representation in their legislatures.
-- The fact that the US electoral system is *awash* in corporate (corrupting) money.
-- The fact that the welfare system in the United States -- welfare for the poor and needy, that is, as opposed to those with full pockets -- is the most mean-spirited welfare system of any advanced industrial country in the world. It's always been mean-spirited, President Bill ("I Love Black People" )Clinton's so-called Welfare Reform Act made it much worse.
-- The fact that the United States has the highest rate of poverty of any advanced industrialized country. By far.
-- The fact that the United States has the highest rate of childhood poverty of any advanced industrialized country. By far.
-- The fact that in other advanced industrial countries:
... the streets are safer;
... the air is cleaner;
... the sick and the elderly are taken care of;
... students don't have to go broke to attend college;
... workers are paid better;
... unions are stronger;
... vacations are, at a minimum, *twice* as long;
... voter turnout is higher;
... the difference between male and female pay is smaller;
... the penal system is more humane;
... public schools are not a sick joke.
QUESTION: Heard anything from that crusading feminist/progressive, Hillary Clinton, about any of those issues? Or from that loyal patriot, John McCain? Or from the Democratic Party's newest savior, Barack Obama?
ANSWER: Nada y nada y pues nada.
Nor about the following:
-- The fact that the United States has the highest rate of incarceration of any country in the world, By far. NOTE WELL: Not as compared to advanced industrial countries, as compared to *all* the countries in the world -- with one out of every 135 US residents currently incarcerated; and with prisons being one of the fastest growing industries in America.
Not a peep. Not a squeak. Not a syllable from candidates millions of Americans dutifully voted for.
OK, let's be fair, let's give them just one more chance. How about *these* issues:
-- The fact that the United States is the only advanced industrialized country without universal health coverage -- with over 50 million Americans not covered by any health insurance whatsoever.
-- The fact that neither Hillary nor Obama nor McCain has ever uttered the words "single payer" in their entire lives.
-- The fact that Canada spends *less* money on health care per capita, yet covers *more* people and covers them *better* than does the US system.
-- The fact that the state of Israel has violated more UN resolutions than any other country in the world. By far! And that their occupation of the West Bank and, in turn, their ghettoization of the Palestinians is morally reprehensible. (As Arthur Miller put it in his play "Incident at Vichy" --"Even the Jew has his Jew. He is the other.")
-- The fact that, today, the Palestinians occupy 10% of the land they did in 1949.
Obama? Ms. Clinton? Senator McCain? Cat got yer tongue?
OK then, how's 'bout these little items?
-- Illegal domestic wiretapping.
-- The fact that the US has the highest rate of homelessness of any advanced industrialized country. By far.
-- And this grotesque obscenity --http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home
Is Obama fixin' to "change" any of these realities?
Don't hold your breath.
Still, it's an historic day in America!
(Gee, that's funny, I remember when it was a "New Morning" in Amerca. That was Reagan's con-line. Plus a change, plus c'est la meme chose.)
BUUUUuuuUUUUUULLlllLLLSHIIIIIiiiiIIIITTttttTT!
Xenophobic as ever, American mainstream media conveniently forgets that black leaders have been in charge of countries, in charge of militaries and in charge of corporations for quite some time now. Some good, some bad. How's Colin Powell grab ya for a black man with integrity? Any word from him about any of the above issues?
Quoting from the following article -- http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jun2008/elec-j09.shtml
"Having a black man, Colin Powell, as chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, or a black woman, Condoleezza Rice, as national security adviser and now secretary of state during the ongoing war in Iraq does not alter the imperialist and predatory character of those wars.
"Nor did having an African-American (CEO Stanley O'Neal) at the helm of Merrill-Lynch make the collapse of the subprime mortgage market—due largely to rampant speculation and deceptive lending practices—more tolerable for millions of low-income borrowers (a disproportionate number of them from minority communities)."
As for the women in charge? What about Golda Meir? Condelezza Rice? Margaret Thatcher? Eva Peron?
And let's not forget that pioneering feminist and champion of the working class, Leonora Helmsley.
Pleeeze! Cut the crap!
The most macabre joke of all is that "Hillary represents feminist values." In what universe is that taking place???
The lesson-to-be-learned as far as Hustler-Hillary is concerned is as follows:
1.) Be born into a well-to-do family. (Hey, anybody can do it!)
2.) Instead of devoting yourself to public service, devote yourself to self-aggrandizement.
3.) Marry Sammy Glick. Or Bill Clinton. Same difference.
4.) Ignore your husband's adolescent, narcissistic philandering -- at the expense of both your self-esteem and the harm it will inevitably do to your child.
5.) When your husband gets elected president and proceeds to completely humiliates you and your child, for God sakes don't leave him! (As any self-respecting wife and mother would do.) No, God no, what are you a commie? No, stand by him -- stand by him because if you don't the gravy train you have a first-class ticket on will come grinding to abrupt halt and you'll spoil your chances of being president -- something which, given your role as Corporate Mouthpiece Par Excellence, you are most certainly entitled to.
6.) Then when you run for president, tell the suckers that you're "Proud to be a woman!" Pretend, like, you know, that you're *concerned* about the pain and misery capitalism and corporatism (capitalism gone wild) and the greed of multinational corporations (all of which you represent, of course) -- pretend like you're really concerned about the pain those forces have caused the world over, but don't actually IDENTIFY THOSE FORCES AS CAUSING THAT PAIN AND MISERY.
7.) Above all, keep in mind what that great American philosopher P.T. Barnum once said: "There's a sucker born every minute. And two guys to take him."
As for *Obama's* historical role in history, what's so historical about this: "The Obama Craze; Count Me Out -- http://www.counterpunch.org/gonzalez02292008.html ... Looks like business as usual to me.
See also -- "Obama, Clinton and identity Politics" --
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jun2008/elec-j09.shtml
Sammy Glick Lives!
This is how empires end. The military consumes the resources and fails to deliver.
Exactly Ulpian, military overreach has killed most empires, but people never learn from history.
Actually, the military is delivering, big time, but to the multinational corporations like Big Oil, Agribusiness, weapons manufacturers, and the Globalists.
America gets to finance the Global elites agenda of One World Corporate (Fascist) Government.
Once they set up the Global Bank and Carbon Dollar (and Carbon Tax) as the new currency, our economy will become like Zimbabwes. In order to pay off our debt, we will be forced to do what we have forced so many 3rd world countries to do, sell off our resources and most valuable assets, such as giving our military to the UN. Don't laugh. The Bilderbergers just met and seem to have decided on this, as the president of the NY Fed called for a Global Central Bank hours after leaving the meeting. Me thinks Bernanke has been told he will step down when Obama wins and this dude may take his job.
Obama will just follow orders, as all our Presidents do.
People-
ck. out H.Zinns
PEOPLES HISTORY OF THE
UNITED STATES
THINGS THAT ONCE WAS
STILL IS!!!!!!
the defense industry is trying to make up for the BILL CLINTON YEARS.....it was very rough for the defense industry during his administration.....no big wasteful military contracts and no overseas cold wars.......FOR THAT THERE WAS GREAT FURY.....
Its all up to you now.......klick.
In Afghanistan a tactical weapon resulted in strategic defeat for the Russians.
Revenge may be mine, sayeth Marx; Iran has multiple batteries of Sunburn anti-ship missiles made by Russia.
Designed soley to beat AWACS/AEGIS and sink US Carriers.
THIS PROVES WE DID NOT SPEND ENOUGH ON DEFENSE, NOW DOESN'T IT?
I have eight dollars and the army can have it.
DENNIS KUCINICH HAS, TODAY, BROUGHT FORTH ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT AGAINST BUSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
wsws love your posts
"Hey, Big Spender..." So the song goes. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword. So the saying goes. More than 30,000 nukes in the world. So the world goes.
Your death: starvation, radiation or disease? My blog has details.
www.dangerouscreation.com
I will let Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, and Dwight D. Eisenhower speak for me, in that order.
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms in not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
As progress in all these areas strengthens world trust, we could proceed concurrently with the next great work-the reduction of the burden of armaments now weighing upon the world. To this end we would welcome and enter into the most solemn agreements. These could properly include:
The limitation, by absolute numbers or by an agreed international ratio, of the sizes of the military and security forces of all nations.
A commitment by all nations to set an agreed limit upon that proportion of total production of certain strategic materials to be devoted to military purposes.
International control of atomic energy to promote its use for peaceful purposes only and to insure the prohibition of atomic weapons.
A limitation or prohibition of other categories of weapons of great destructiveness.
The enforcement of all these agreed limitations and prohibitions by adequate safe-guards, including a practical system of inspection under the United Nations.
The details of such disarmament programs are manifestly critical and complex. Neither the United States nor any other nation can properly claim to possess a perfect, immutable formula. But the formula matters less than the faith-the good faith without which no formula can work justly and effectively.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
i want my 202 dollars back.................
what if every state and province, township and municipality one by one decided to become conscientious war tax resisters, and to not allow any production which supports the war machine?
Maybe Quebec and Vermont could secede from the respective countries, form an new nation and become a beacon of peace, or at least a place of refuge from insanity.
lisa3210peace, "I have eight dollars and the army can have it." made me laugh.
Why...I noticed today how this works.
I caught the BBC World News...showed me people, especially kids from S'west part of Ethiopia, on the edge of dying because of famine. They didn't even have the energy to brush the flies from their own eyes and lips.
This, in the Ethiopian state that had no problem, at the behest of the West, sending well armed military into Somalia, their neighbour, to dismantle whatever was going on there.
Upian AND bidelo,
That is true but don't discount the long lasting effects of crumbling empires, i.e. Britain. Much of the world map and current conflicts are rooted in the dying breaths of empires e.g. Britain, Ottoman. It's all intertwined, Iraq 1920, Syria 1923, Palestine 1920, etc, etc, blah, blah , blah. The current spasms of the dying American empire will have an effect for the rest of this century. The ride will be rough and navigation skills are required.
Same as it ever was.....
So, emjay, y'mean we can look forward to some American Curzon to redraw a few borders here and there around the globe? Sort of a combination of Wilson's autonomy stuff and Curzon's casual hand?
I once met a gentleman at a party who said that he worked for the government. He said that he had a large home overlooking the city and a private airplane.
The point - war and destruction pays big money to those who do their bidding - the selling of war toys to foreign governments. Reality check please.
Dennis Kucinich has put the Articles of Impeachment on the table.
Hopefully our spineless congress will follow through with their constitutional duty.
Roll back the congressional power usurped by this administration before any president takes office.
How can we expect a new president to give up inherited power?
IMPEACH NOW!!!
middlec; at the corner of my street two people live; each with tricked out SUV's and DoD stickers on the windshield.
And I've talked to these well fed folks and I'm pretty sure they are not one whit smarter than my doggie.
Like you said, it pays well.
Peace from Maggies Farm.
wsws you sound a little bitter.
Does anyone remember the "Peace dividend"?
Just part of the faith based programming! My god [gun] is bigger than your god {gun]!
Thus spake the arms merchant: peace is an accident to be avoided at all costs.
I doubt if the Lightmaker will change this. Kucinich would have tried to - but that was why he was mocked into the margins while the Audacious One was groomed. He will toe the line. Militarists have done well out of the last ten years, evidently, and will continue to do well. Only real change, in our attitudes towards war and violence, and our tolerance of the death and destruction they bring, will improve matters.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican President of U.S 1953-1961)
"THERE WILL BE NO PEACE DIVIDEND!" Poppy Bush---while waving his saggy face and flag in the "Cold War victory"....Well-said above: the biggest spenders on war will be the biggest losers
Bush widens immigration checks
Federal contractors must verify workers' legal status, his order says. Millions could eventually be affected.
What human being could ever work for this government?
Surrender June 9th, 2008 9:00 pm
"DENNIS KUCINICH HAS, TODAY, BROUGHT FORTH ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT AGAINST BUSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
And the brain-dead members of the House and Senate will ignore them......again!