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Global Weapons Spending Hits Record Levels
•US accounts for more than half total increase to $1.4tn •China now second biggest spender in world league table
Worldwide spending on weapons has reached record levels amounting to well over $1tn last year, a leading research organisation reported today.
U.S soldiers walk past a camel-hair carpet on sale at Kandahar Airfield, June 8 2009.
(REUTERS/Jorge Silva) Global military expenditure has risen by 45% over the past decade to $1.46tn, according to the latest annual Yearbook on Armaments, Disarmament, and International Security published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).
Though the US accounts for more than half the total increase, China and Russia nearly tripled their military expenditure over the decade, with China now second only to the US in the military expenditure league table.
"China had both the largest absolute and the largest relative increase," says the Sipri report. The increase "has roughly paralleled its economic growth and is also linked to its major power aspirations," it adds.
Other regional powers, including India, Brazil and Algeria, also substantially increased their spending on arms, the report says.
Despite increasing its military expenditure by 3% in real terms in 2008 and by 21% since 1999, Britain faces a significant military budget shortfall. Sipri says this is due partly to the UK's involvement in two conflicts, in Afghanistan and Iraq, which are projected to have cost a total of £12bn ($18bn). It is also partly due to commitments to numerous large weapons procurement projects that cannot be funded under current budget plans. To close the budget shortfall, the MoD decided last year to reduce or postpone, but not cancel, large projects including plans to build two aircraft carriers, and high-tech armoured cars for the army.
"The idea of the 'war on terror' has encouraged many countries to see their problems through a highly militarised lens, using this to justify high military spending," said Dr Sam Perlo-Freeman, head of Sipri's military expenditure project. "Meanwhile, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost $903bn in additional military spending by the USA alone."
Sipri's yearbook also lists the top 100 arms producing companies, excluding Chinese ones, for which figures were unavailable. Boeing remained the top arms producer in 2007 - the most recent year for which reliable data is available - with arms sales worth $30.5bn. All the top 20 companies are American or European.
Their aggregate arms sales amounted to $347bn in 2007, an increase of 5% in real terms over 2006.
Sipri estimates that in total there are about 8,400 operational nuclear warheads in the world, of which almost 2,000 are kept on high alert and capable of being launched in minutes. Counting spare warheads, those in storage and those due to be dismantled, there are 23,300 nuclear weapons in the arsenals of eight states - the US, Russia, China, the UK, France, India, Pakistan and Israel, according to the yearbook.
The number of people forcibly displaced by conflict has also increased in recent years, with internally displaced persons (IDPs) reaching 26 million, more than twice the number of refugees, says the Sipri report. "For a large share of these people, no sustainable solution is in sight. Mass population displacement is often a result - and even a goal - of violence against civilians."
Top 10 military spenders in 2008 ($bn)
1 USA 607
2 China 84.9
3 France 65.7
4 UK 65.3
5 Russia 58.6
6 Germany 46.8
7 Japan 46.3
8 Italy 40.6
9 Saudi Arabia 38.2
10 India 30
- Posted in
32 Comments so far
Show AllTrillions for offense, but not one thin dime to help the people!
Sioux Rose
MINITRUE: Now do you see why I say "Mars rules"?
minitrue,
I can't stop laughing! That is the funniest one-liner I've ever read on Common Dreams, but sad to say, it's true!
Single Payer Health Care...can't afford it.
Siouxrose, blessed art thou. I'm a believer!
Coporations are multinational and any nation is expendable.
This is why we are seeing Vulture Capitalism being practiced upon the USA nation.
The parts sold, outsourced and scraped are more valuable than the functioning viable whole.
Bleeding the USA nation dry with military expenditures is part of this Vulture Capitalism policy of multinationals.
Hey -we're number one!
U-S-A!
U-S-A!!!
You're mad funny!
Note How France , The UK, Germany and Italy are all in the top ten and all members of NATO supposedly formed to "defend themselves" against an attack from Russia.
Yet we have people who insist that the USA's high levels of spending, is because they have to defend Europe.
Japan is also one of the big league spenders yet the Militarists insist the USA has has to defend Japan, thus the need for those bases there.
It all a load of Crap. Given that the USA Borders on only two countries, neither a Military threat they could easily have a robust Military able to defend itself by spending 50 billion a year.
Thats 950 billion freed up for all those things they can not afford.
If the USA dropped its spending to 50 billion a year, countries like a Russia (which American strategists have long lusted after her territories) would nto feel the need to spend 60 billion.
Nato and the USA are a threat to world peace. Their bellicose nature and their support of aggressive nations such as Israel fuel the arms war.
The USA remains the single most dangerous and most ROGUE nation in the world exhibiting time and time again its Militarist nature by bombing and attacking nations that are no threat to anyones security.
Canada should pull out of Nato NOW.
I bet we all wish we had stock in Lockheed Martin, Northrop-Grumman, Raytheon, GE, and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems eh?
If we included the related expenditures to the official 'defense' budget I bet the figure would be much higher.
Sioux Rose
SOCIALIST: Personally I would not want that blood karma.
Nor I, it was just a sarcastic commnent
I dis-invested from all war stocks when Bush started his War on the World. I haven't looked back.
I'd rather live in a cave, wear rags and eat grass than partake in this destruction of America.
So we still spend more than all the rest of the world combined on "defense". How sweet for those who make bombs and other weapons. So let me ask this: How is it that we spend that much on the military, but when it comes down to fighting more than 2 measly third world countries, we are tapped out? We have heard it said that we can't go anywhere else, fight in any more wars, and that our military is depleted and will need a decade to rework itself after W's lying war. How is it that we spend that much and have so little to show for it?
We should be able to take on the rest of the world at once for what we spend. But this is all just like republican health care, where we spend more than anyone else in the world and have lower success rates than the third world. We outspend EVERYONE, and yet in two third world countries, we are done, end of game. If someone REAL were to attack us, we would be defenseless.
This is stupid. It's far too costly, and the return is so minimal. And the stupidity of not seeing that we could give half that money to the developing world, and eliminate 98% of whatever "threats" there are to us rather than piss them all off and wait to be attacked is mind boggling. It's time to put some people in charge who aren't eaten up with nothing but mass stupidity, as well as to make it illegal to buy politicians.
And minitrue had it dead on. Feed people and you won't have to go killing them. God, the insanity of those who need to run things is a sure sign that they aren't capable of doing the job.
Yes, one wonders how much an IED costs.
Not much, they often use USA taxpayer's duds.
Sioux
WJM: As a recent Pope once put it, the US is a DEATH culture. Martin Luther King also related that a nation that spends more on armaments than the social uplift of its people approaches SPIRITUAL DEATH. Someone on CD posted a quote by the PNAC pretty much stating that reducing the population was one of its objectives. What better way than to arm everyone, reduce the money supply, turn nation against nation and then ring the bell! Everyone for him/her self style! The Roman Arena taken on a global scale might satisfy the fantasies of those who wish to see a dramatic population reduction, those who are so morally bankrupt as to have learned nothing from the agonizing legacy (and pictures) of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the new legions of those exposed to the cancer-causing Agent Orange and/or D.U.
There may not be a Biblical Judgment Day, but the Lords of Karma keep "score," and any who fell in line to promote, support, or profit by these diabolically deadly enterprises will have MUCH to answer for. "How did you show homage? To what God did you sacrifice so much life by willfully developing resources that stole from the hungry to kill the struggling masses?" Priorities could not be more twisted if there was such a thing as Satan, a living embodiment of evil. EVIL has become the ways and means of modern business, a seamless transition that makes the priorities of "the dark side" tantamount to "business as usual." The business is murder, massacre, rape, destruction, depravity and clever words of cover that echoe through media chambers like bandaids placed upon severed bleeding limbs.
It's called FASCISM.
reminds me of the final scene in "Lord of War", about a relatively small-time arms dealer:
the top 5 arms dealers in the world?
the 5 permanent members of the UN "Security" Council.
they buy the most for themselves, and sell the most to the rest of the world (led overwhelmingly by the US, of course)
the purpose of war today is more war. we'll be having some serious good times when our "af-pak" war spills over into india and/or china (and/or russia for that matter). maybe that's its purpose? the US destabilized afghanistan to destabilize the USSR, why not the same in pakistan? worked so brilliantly once, and carter, zbig, reagan, etc., didn't think twice about the nuclear possibilities of the soviet's collapse (not even w/the "shock therapy", and innumerable other provocations since 1990), why would such considerations faze them now?
The crux of the problem is that the American people don't know squat about what's going on.
Why? MEDIA CONTROL. Those who control the media have huge investments in war. So long as they bullcrap us, they'll keep getting richer. They do such a good job that seemingly intelligent people parrot really stupid things, like "they hate our freedoms", or "they don't recognize Israel's right to exist", or "support our military".
Support them in WHAT? I don't want to be associated with people who go out killing, blinding, maiming, raping, torturing women, children and men so they can earn bread for their own families.
COWARDS!
money, money, money...
here is one from the corps..
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13512&printsafe=1
The weapons manufacturers must be shut down. The people making money from weapons manufacturing and dealing should be held accountable. I am not talking about vigilantism, I am talking about real legal accountability. Picketing outside houses and factories is good too.
It's possible that the world economy would collapse if weapon manufacture was shut down. It seems to be the most profitable product, even topping drugs and McDonald's cheeseburgers. Maybe it's time we considered going back to something that works, such as matriarchal tribal culture. Methinks the hippies, Native Americans, Aborigines (and perhaps Orcas) are on to something.
It's likely that most weapons manufactured in the USA sit in their crates for on average five years, then get melted down and recycled again, taxpayers billed again, and back in the very same crates.
Sounds good to me.
Haliburton Mc Boeing Boeing
I'm not convinced by this argument. That money spent by governments on weapons can always be spent on something else: schools, universities, healthcare, public transportation, food.
Just because governments are not spending that money on weapons does not mean that they have to not spend it.
Governments are always talking about having to cut this and that program to balance their budgets. Fine. Cut the defense programs.
Of course, you are right. Pardon my tongue in cheek.
Remarkable physicists like Micio Kaku has proposed that 1 in 10 intelligent civilizations in the Universe never make it out of the "type 0" classification (lowest energy use as a measure of the sophistication of a civilization) because they destroy themselves before they can progress cooperatively.
I believe we are seeing the end stage of our planet with consideration to this hypothesis.
We just don't have too far until we bring on the end to our world.
I think Micio Kaku has a very vivid imagination. But it does' take a remarkable physicist to see that our species is probably doomed.
Usans probably believe their military expenditures are roughly the same as the next several contenders, instead of 10x. They could be persuaded in a nanosecond to double it again. Just say "boo!'
Arms
Manunufacturing
Extirpating
Races &
Intensifying
Conflicts,
Afghanistan.
There is definitely something wrong with this picture. One country spending 700% more than the next in line? What perversity!
So I wonder if we can ever evolve out of this mentality, the ridiculousness of it that is beyond comprehension and definitely not in the interest of survival, (which I thought was the main drive of any kind of life form.) We need some mass awakening to the wonder and beauty of existence on this planet, methinks too many are taking it for granted.
Let's see, going by the above figures in the article, the USA is still outspending more than all the worlds countries *combined* spending on weapons.
476.4 bn (combined spending on weapons on every country listed)
607 bn (just the USA alone)
As has been reported in past articles, the USA is still at the head of the list by an immense amount.
Years ago I used to say to friends that the USA only has two (open) things going for it that keep it ahead of the rest of the world.
1) Technology
2) Military
Before that however I used to say there was a third item and that was manufacturing (and the ability to mass manufacture), but of course we all know that disappeared much like in the rest of the world.....except for example China.
BTW, of course we realise how much covert and criminal action the USA does too in maintaining it's top dog status.
Whilst the USA seems to be heading more into a kind of fascist existence, what is just as troubling is that if it went under that would trigger a dash for power amongst the rest of the worlds powers who have already shown a blatant disregard for human life.
It seems either way things are bad, and look to escalate greatly.
Despite that, people are still hopeful worldwide but they keep getting smacked down mightily by those who refuse to give up power.