Europe's military spending grew at a record pace in 2022, reaching a level unseen since the Cold War following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, global security researchers said Monday.
The rise in Europe helped global military expenditures reach an eighth straight record at $2.24 trillion, or 2.2 percent of the world's gross domestic product, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
"It's driven by the war in Ukraine, (which is) driving European budget spending upwards, but also the unresolved and worsening tensions in East Asia between the US and China," researcher Nan Tian, one of the study's co-authors, told AFP.
Europe spent 13 percent more on its armies in 2022 than in the previous 12 months, in a year marked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The figure does not take into account sharp inflation rates, which means actual spending was even higher, the think tank said.
That was the strongest increase in more than 30 years, and a return, in constant dollars, to the level of spending in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell.
"In Europe, it is at its highest level since essentially the end of the Cold War," Tian said.
Ukraine alone increased its spending seven-fold to $44 billion, or a third of its GDP. The country has additionally benefitted from billions of dollars of weapons donations from abroad, SIPRI noted.
At the same time, Russian spending rose by 9.2 percent last year, estimates showed.
"Irrespective of whether you remove the two warring nations, European spending has still has increased by quite a lot," Tian said.
Spending in Europe, which totaled $480 billion in 2022, has already risen by a third in the past decade, and the trend is expected to continue and accelerate over the next decade.
The continent could "potentially" see growth levels similar to 2022 for several years, Tian said.
After declining sharply in the 1990s, global military expenditure has been on the rise since the 2000s.
The upturn was initially the result of China's massive investments in its military, which was then followed by renewed tensions with Russia after its annexation of Crimea in 2014.
