World military spending

Military expenditure is the expenditure by a country’s government on their military forces, i.e. maintenance and operations, military research and development, Military aid, procurement, salaries, pensions, etc. World military spending refers to the aggregate global military spending by different countries - analysis of this data can help understand the status of a particular country as a military power in the world arena.

This military expenditure of various countries is given by the SIPRI (). The data presented by the SIPRI is based on the data provided by the national governments which include the national budget documents, defence white papers and public finance statistics published by ministries of finance and defence, central banks and national statistical offices.SIPRI is currently located in Sweden and provides a very intellectual platform for different researchers from various countries to come, work and think together. The SIPRI has its associations with many international and regional institutes like UN Department for Disarmament Affairs (DDA), the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR),Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU).

As a website, global issues states “Global military expenditure stands at over $1.6 trillion in annual expenditure at current prices for 2010 (or $1.56 trillion dollars at constant 2009 prices), and has been rising in recent years.” This shows that the world military expenditure in 2010 is estimated to be over about $1.6 trillion pointing towards a 1.3% rise since 2009 and 50% rise since 2001. This is 2.6% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP). Amongst all the countries of the world the U.S.A accounts for highest military spending across the globe. Constituting for 43% of the world total followed by China, UK, France and Russia. as the website newser.com states, "In many cases, the falls or slower increases represent a delayed reaction to the global financial and economic crisis that broke in 2008," wrote the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute SIPRI in a statement. Military spending includes expenses for military and civil personnel, the retirement pensions for army personnel as well as social services, all the military operations and programmes and maintenance of the same, military aid and lastly military research and development. As we have seen earlier the United States of America is incurring the highest military expenditure in the world. It is considered a superpower and a determinant of the worlds military spending. Their spending in the recent times has increased due to terror and Afghanistan and Iraq invasions. Even though there have been financial crises the military expenses have shown no signs of change. The expenditure on a country's armed forces remains the same.

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