The world’s military expenditure has nearly doubled since 2000. It now amounts to about $2 trillion per year, more than half of which is from NATO countries. Now, with the war raging in Ukraine, countries are rushing to increase their budgets even more; Germany, for instance, recently announced a roughly 30 percent increase of its military spending, with an additional €100 billion going into a special fund for its armed forces. The U.S. administration, in turn, is reportedly preparing a 2023 Pentagon budget of $773 billion, and Congress is likely to increase this number, just as it did last year.
Military spending increases may seem like a natural—even commendable—response to the Ukraine crisis. In reality, growing military budgets have persisted for decades despite macroeconomic or geopolitical trends. In 2020, for instance—the year 120 million people were pushed into poverty by a 4.4 percent recession and 98 million people were directly affected by storms, floods and other climate disasters—military expenditures continued to increase by an average of 2.6 percent worldwide.
Our house is burning, and instead of coming together to stanch the flames, we are busy building nuclear submarines, hypersonic missiles and other weapons of doom. The
— source scientificamerican.com | Carlo Rovelli, Matteo Smerlak | Mar 17, 2022