Spending by the United States rose by 5.7 percent and China by 7 percent.
Military expenditure worldwide hit $2.178 trillion last year, rising for the 10th straight year, with the United States spending nearly $1 trillion, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in an April 28 statement.
Global expenditure saw an increase of “9.4 percent in real terms from 2023 and the steepest year-on-year rise since at least the end of the Cold War,” the report said.
“The world’s 15 largest spenders in 2024 all increased their military expenditure. The global military burden—the share of global gross domestic product (GDP) devoted to military expenditure—increased to 2.5 percent in 2024.”
The United States’ military spending jumped 5.7 percent from 2023 to hit $997 billion last year.
“A significant portion of the U.S. budget for 2024 was dedicated to modernizing military capabilities and the U.S. nuclear arsenal in order to maintain a strategic advantage over Russia and China,” SIPRI said.
U.S. military spending accounted for 66 percent of total NATO expenditure last year. European NATO members spent $454 billion, making up 30 percent of the military alliance’s spending.
According to SIPRI’s analysis, out of the 32 NATO member nations, only 18 spent 2 percent of their GDP on military.
NATO’s military spending guideline from 2014 requires members to meet the 2 percent GDP target.
The current U.S. administration is pressing NATO to spend more than that on defense. During a Jan. 23 address at the World Economic Forum, President Donald Trump asked all NATO nations to increase defense spending to 5 percent of their GDP.
This “is what it should have been years ago—it was only at 2 percent, and most nations didn’t pay until I came along, I insisted that they pay, and they did,” he said.
The same day, Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, said Trump was right to demand that NATO members spend 5 percent on defense.
As for Europe specifically, military expenses in 2024 jumped 17 percent yearly to $693 billion, according to the SIPRI report. It said Europe was the “main contributor” to the global increase in military expenditures last year.
