World military expenditure reached the highest level since the end of the Cold War at $1.739 trillion in 2017 according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) military expenditure database.
‘The increases in world military expenditure in recent years have been largely due to the substantial growth in spending by countries in Asia and Oceania and the Middle East, such as China, India and Saudi Arabia,’ said Dr Nan Tian, Researcher with the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure (AMEX) programme. Among this interesting data collection, Russia slashed its military spending by around 20 % last year.
Spending falls sharply in Russia
This study shows that despite soaring tensions between Moscow and the West, Russia’s military expenses last year came in at $66.3 billion, 20 % lower than in 2016. The last time Moscow was forced to cut spending was in 1998 at the height of a massive economic crisis. As the third largest producer of oil in the world, the 2014 collapse in crude prices hit the Russian economy hard, forcing the value of the ruble down by around 50%. This was accentuated by international sanctions over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and role in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine’s Donbass area.
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