News Desk - The Cradle
Washington is on track to surpass a $1 trillion yearly defense budget before the end of the decade
“In 2023, military spending increased in all five geographical regions for the first time since 2009,” the western think tank reports, highlighting that the 6.8 percent spike in global military spending from a year earlier is “the highest level ever recorded by SIPRI.”
The Pentagon alone accounted for 37 percent of the total figure, far outweighing all other nations with a defense budget of $916 billion for 2023.
China trails behind in second place, with a defense budget of $296 billion, which marks a six percent spike from 2022 and a massive jump of 60 percent from 2014. Russia comes in third with $109 billion, as the nation boosted its defense spending by 24 percent from the previous year.
India and Saudi Arabia round out the top five, with $83.6 billion and $75.8 billion spent on defense in 2023, respectively.
The Saudi kingdom is the highest defense spender in West Asia, followed by Israel with $27.5 billion and Turkiye with $15.8 billion. The region saw a nine percent spike in military expenditures in 2023.
Experts have warned that US defense spending will surpass $1 trillion per year before the decade is out, as Washington has remained steadfast in fueling conflicts across the globe, including the war in Ukraine and the Israeli genocide in Gaza. In its most recent bill, on 20 April, the US House passed a $95 billion foreign aid package that would provide additional funding to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan.
The blank check handed to US defense officials every year comes despite the Pentagon's failure to pass its independent annual audit for six years in a row.
The Pentagon's shadowy practices have boosted the profits of US weapons makers like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman, as their profits have soared despite the challenges posed by inflation and supply chain issues caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The predatory practices of the US military-industrial complex were put on full display earlier this month after JP Morgan upgraded the outlook for Lockheed Martin from “hold” to “buy” one day after Iran launched a massive retaliatory attack on Israel, setting a higher price target for the arms dealer's stock.
“What we can say is that it’s a dangerous world, and while that is not a sufficient condition for defense stocks to outperform, it is a potential source of support, especially when they are under-owned,” JP Morgan analyst Seth Seifman said on 15 April. The New York-based financial institution owns $355 million worth of Lockheed Martin stock, about a third of which was bought in the last quarter of 2023.
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