The militarisation of the world
New SIPRI data shows Germany and Europe driving the global arms race with double-digit increases in their military budgets. Global military spending reached new heights in 2025, while poverty and hunger are rampant.
BERLIN/BRUSSELS (own report) – With a double-digit increase in its military budget, Germany is driving forward Europe’s arms race; and Europe, also with double-digit defence budget growth, is fuelling the global arms race. This disturbing trend is quantified in the latest analysis of the development of global military expenditure by the SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. According to SIPRI, spending on the Bundeswehr rose by 24 per cent to 114 billion US dollars in 2025, whilst Europe’s expenditure on the continent’s various armies grew by 14 per cent. This puts Germany and the European states at the forefront of the global arms race. Global military spending was up by 2.9 per cent to 2.887 trillion dollars last year. This means that, for the first time, 2.5 per cent of the combined economic output of all nations was squandered on weapons, whilst nearly a tenth of the world’s population continues to live in extreme poverty. What’s more, the wars resulting from this arms race are exacerbating hunger and misery. In Germany and the wider EU, it is also estimated that around a fifth of the population are at risk of poverty. Cuts in social expenditure are looming as the arms race ramps up.
Records in global arms spending
Global military expenditure, which had already reached a record high of 2.718 trillion dollars in 2024, rose again last year to a new record of 2.887 trillion US dollars. These figures come from the latest analysis by the Stockholm-based research institute SIPRI, which was published yesterday, Monday. It documents the eleventh year-on-year increase since 2015 – the year immediately following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict. The fact that the 2015 increase did not match the 9.7 per cent for 2024 (falling to only 2.9 per cent) is an outlier caused by developments in the United States. Military spending by Washington fell by 7.5 per cent primarily because the Trump administration ended military support for Ukraine. If we factor out the US, global military expenditure rose by 9.2 per cent in 2025, almost as much as the 2024 figure. Overall, the funds made available worldwide for armed forces increased by 41 per cent between 2016 and 2025. The military share of global economic output rose to 2.5 per cent, marking another gloomy record.[1]
Power struggle in Asia
SIPRI reports a significant rise in defence spending in Asia and the Pacific region, rising by 8.1 per cent to 681 billion dollars in 2025. According to SIPRI’s data, China increased its spending by 7.4 per cent to 336 billion dollars, amounting to 1.7 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP).[2] But expenditure grew even more sharply among the West’s regional allies in their power struggle against the People’s Republic. India, for example, spent 92.1 billion dollars on its armed forces in 2025, an increase of 8.9 per cent compared to 2024. Japan increased its military expenditure by 9.7 per cent to 62.2 billion dollars. SIPRI points out that Tokyo procured long-range weapons such as cruise missiles, alongside new reconnaissance systems designed to generate target data for such weapons. Taiwan, for its part, increased its defence budget by approximately 14 per cent to 18.2 billion dollars. A striking development is that, at the same time, the US share of global military spending is huge but has fallen. It stood at 39 per cent in 2020 but had shrunk to just over 33 per cent by 2025. This can change. President Trump is currently seeking to increase the next US defence budget to a record 1.5 trillion dollars.
The driving force
The clear driving force behind the global militarisation is Europe: The continent, SIPRI notes, saw a 14 per cent rise in military expenditure in 2025. The two warring states, Russia and Ukraine, contributed to this to varying degrees. Whilst Russia increased its spending by 5.9 per cent to an estimated 190 billion dollars, Ukraine’s spending rose by 20 per cent to 84.1 billion. For Europe as a whole, the aggregated military budgets came to 864 billion dollars. This is significantly more than the defence budgets of the Asia-Pacific region (681 billion). The combined defence spending of NATO’s European member states alone stood at nearly 559 billion, an increase of 23.1 per cent on 2024. And it is set to rise even more rapidly. NATO has officially committed its members to spending 5 per cent of their GDP on defence by 2035. This breaks down into 3.5 per cent directly on the armed forces, and 1.5 per cent on related purposes, including the expansion of military infrastructure. The thirty-two NATO member states alone spent a good 1.581 trillion dollars on their military in 2025, accounting for 55 per cent of the global total.
Number one in Europe
The main driver of the arms build-up in Europe last year has been Germany, and this is expected to remain the case in the coming years. SIPRI’s statistics show that Germany increased its military spending in 2025 by a hefty 24 per cent to 114 billion dollars. This marks the third consecutive year of double-digit percentage growth. Further increases are likely to follow. The German government aims to allocate 3.5 per cent of German GDP to the Bundeswehr by 2029. Last year, the figure stood at 2.3 per cent – the first time since 1990 that it had exceeded the two-per cent threshold. Achieving the pledged five-per cent target is made slightly easier in percentage terms by the fact that German GDP is effectively no longer growing or is even shrinking. But despite the economic woes, Berlin expects to achieve an annual military budget of over 150 billion euros in 2029. That would be almost double what France currently aims to achieve by 2030 (76.3 billion euros). Italy’s defence budget, the country with the third-largest economy in the EU, stood at around 35.5 billion euros in 2025. It is unclear whether and how Rome can increase it. So Germany is rapidly overtaking all its rivals in the EU.
Poverty and hunger
As Germany and Europe play a leading role in driving global militarisation, the United Nations has highlighted destitution. Some 808 million people worldwide still live in extreme poverty, which constitutes 9.9 per cent of the world’s population.[3] As living costs rise, the threshold used as the benchmark is no longer 2.15 dollars but 3.00 dollars per day. According to the Global Hunger Index, hunger worldwide has “barely decreased” since 2016. And this failure coincides with the current wave of militarisation. What is more, “armed conflicts remain the biggest driver of hunger”.[4] Even in the EU, 93.3 million people were, according to Eurostat data, at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2024. That was as much as 21 per cent of the population. For Germany, Eurostat calculates a poverty figure of 21.1 per cent of the population. [5] The proportion of children and young people under the age of eighteen at risk of poverty or social exclusion stood at as high as 21.4 per cent in the EU, and 23.5 per cent in Germany.[6] To facilitate the rapid arms build-up, drastic cuts to social budgets and pensions are currently being prepared or have already been implemented across Europe. Just a few days ago, Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced plans to drive down pensions to just a “basic level of protection”.[7] Following protests, he claimed that this somehow did not imply a cut in pensions. There is now doubt, however, that rising poverty caused by military spending is inevitable.
More on this topic: Die „europäische Führungsrolle“ der Bundeswehr and Back to Prussia.
[1] Figures here and below from: Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2025. SIPRI Fact Sheet. Solna, April 2026.
[2] Comparability is difficult because in the case of China SIPRI factors in expenditures in the armed forces budget that have military uses listed under other budget titles. This is not done in the case of Western states.
[3] End poverty in all its forms everywhere. unstats.un.org.
[4] 20 Jahre Fortschritt im Blick: Zeit für ein neues Bekenntnis zu Zero Hunger. globalhungerindex.org.
[5], [6] Hermine Donceel: EU map: How bad is poverty in the EU? euranetplus-inside.eu 17.10.2025.
[7] Gesetzliche Rente als „Basisabsicherung“: Was das für junge Leute bedeutet. tagesschau.de 26.04.2026.
