Yesterday I discussed the overwhelmingly large budget that the United States allots for military expenditures. We are certainly the most dominant military power in the world so it is a give-in that we would have exorbitant military expenses. However the global military spending is up as well with a cumulative growth of 45 percent over the past ten years. Last year global military spending increased by six percent. Last year a total of 1.339 trillion dollars was spent on global military expenses. As I have mentioned recently this accounts for 2.5 percent of the global gross domestic product.
I would like to know what the readers of this blog make of the growing trends in military spending. Other world leaders such as Britain and China account for about five percent of global expenses. Do you think that the United States is spending too much if they are spending nine times as much as their closest competitor? Granted the war on terror has increased this budget. Eastern Europe has increased it’s military spending most dramatically from 2006 to 2007 by a total of 16 percent.
What factors are contributing to such overwhelming growth within this sector? Experts say that nations are buffing up their military budgets in an effort to accomplish foreign policy objectives and to keep other nations from bullying them with unrequited military force. Another major contributing factor is how nations perceive threats from other nations. Sometimes nations vamp up their military expenditures because they perceive threats that are actually nonexistent.
