By Ankit Panda
April 16, 2015
SIPRI’s new annual estimate shows that while global defense spending dipped in 2014, Asia’s continued to grow.
On Monday, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released the latest edition of its annual measure of military expenditure worldwide, cataloging spending for 2014. Despite perceptions that the world is ever unstable with conflict — with instability on Ukraine’s border with Russia, the Middle East, and North Africa — global military spending dropped ever so slightly, by 0.4 percent in real terms, since 2013 according to SIPRI’s report. The fall marks the third consecutive year of global decline in military spending.
However, Asia and Oceania, our regions of interest here at The Diplomat, broke with global trends, with military expenditure rising by 5 percent, reaching a total of $439 billion. That number should be somewhat unsurprising given that Asia is home to major emerging economies such as India and China, both of whom are not only experiencing annual GDP growth in excess of 5 percent but are rapidly growing their militaries. In its press release for the 2014 report, SIPRI highlights China’s role in Asia’s overall growth, noting that the region’s “increase is mostly accounted for by a 9.7 percent increase by China, which spent an estimated $216 billion.” This is considerably higher than China’s stated official budget for 2014, which was reported as $132 billion.
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