The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has revealed that war spending will increase by 8 percent from 2022 to 2023, reaching a record 2,440 billion dollars. This is the biggest annual increase in military spending in more than a decade, since 2009.

SIPRI also adds that this is the first time that military spending has grown simultaneously in all five geographical areas, namely Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Oceans.

"The unprecedented increase in military spending is a direct response to the deterioration of the global peace and security environment," said Nan Tian, one of SIPRI's principal investigators.

In his view, "states are prioritizing their military power, but they run the risk of spiraling action-reaction in a landscape of increasing geopolitical and security volatility".

The two countries with the highest levels of military spending are the United States, with 37 percent of the total, and China, with 12 percent. The two countries alone account for almost half of the world's military spending, having grown by 2.3 and 6 percent respectively in the period under review.

The United States has spent 9.4 percent more of its budget on "research, development, testing and evaluation" than it did in 2022, demonstrating Washington's commitment to staying ahead in terms of military technological development.

The UK saw an increase of 7.9 percent, making it the country with the highest military spending in Central and Western Europe.

Russia increased its military spending by 24 percent from 2022 to 2023, the first year of its most recent invasion of Ukraine, and 57 percent more than in 2014, when it invaded Ukraine for the first time, with the occupation of the Crimean Peninsula. With military spending at 5.9 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), equivalent to 16 percent of all Russian government spending, 2023 represented the highest rate of military spending recorded in the country since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

India increased its military spending by 4.2 percent between 2022 and 2023. SIPRI notes, however, that 75 percent of capital expenditure in the field of defense is related to domestically produced equipment, which demonstrates the country's progress towards self-sufficiency in military production.

Saudi Arabia saw an increase of 4.3 percent to 75.8 billion dollars, 7.1 percent of its GDP. The Middle East had an average growth of 9 percent.

With 4.2 percent, the Middle East is the region of the world with the highest rate of military spending as a proportion of GDP, followed by Europe with 2.8 percent, Africa (1.9 percent), Asia and Oceania (1.7 percent) and America (1.2 percent).