The military spending of all nations combined set a new record in 2021, exceeding the $2 trillion mark for the first time ever, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) revealed in a report published on Monday.
According to the report, while the U.S. defense spending slid by 1.4% compared to 2020, Washington remained the absolute global leader, having lavished some $801 billion last year.
Total global military expenditure increased by 0.7 per cent in real terms in 2021, to reach $2113 billion. The five largest spenders in 2021 were the U.S., China, India, the UK and Russia, together accounting for 62 per cent of expenditure, according to new data on global military spending published by the SIPRI.
A SIPRI report said:
Military expenditure reaches record level in the second year of the pandemic
World military spending continued to grow in 2021, reaching an all-time high of $2.1 trillion. This was the seventh consecutive year that spending increased.
‘Even amid the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, world military spending hit record levels,’ said Dr Diego Lopes da Silva, Senior Researcher with SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme. ‘There was a slowdown in the rate of real-terms growth due to inflation. In nominal terms, however, military spending grew by 6.1 per cent.’
As a result of a sharp economic recovery in 2021, the global military burden — world military expenditure as a share of world gross domestic product (GDP) — fell by 0.1 percentage points, from 2.3 per cent in 2020 to 2.2 per cent in 2021.
U.S. Focuses On Military R & D
The SIPRI report said:
U.S. military spending amounted to $801 billion in 2021, a drop of 1.4 per cent from 2020. The U.S. military burden decreased slightly from 3.7 per cent of GDP in 2020 to 3.5 per cent in 2021.
U.S. funding for military research and development (R&D) rose by 24 per cent between 2012 and 2021, while arms procurement funding fell by 6.4 per cent over the same period. In 2021 spending on both decreased. The drop in R&D spending (–1.2 per cent) was smaller than that in arms procurement spending (–5.4 per cent).
‘The increase in R&D spending over the decade 2012–21 suggests that the United States is focusing more on next-generation technologies,’ said Alexandra Marksteiner, Researcher with SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme. ‘The U.S. Government has repeatedly stressed the need to preserve the U.S. military’s technological edge over strategic competitors.’
Russia Increases Military Budget In Run-up To War
The report said:
Russia increased its military expenditure by 2.9 per cent in 2021, to $65.9 billion, at a time when it was building up its forces along the Ukrainian border. This was the third consecutive year of growth and Russia’s military spending reached 4.1 per cent of GDP in 2021.
‘High oil and gas revenues helped Russia to boost its military spending in 2021. Russian military expenditure had been in decline between 2016 and 2019 as a result of low energy prices combined with sanctions in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014,’ said Lucie Béraud-Sudreau, Director of SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Program.
The ‘national defence’ budget line, which accounts for around three-quarters of Russia’s total military spending and includes funding for operational costs as well as arms procurement, was revised upwards over the course of the year. The final figure was $48.4 billion, 14 per cent higher than had been budgeted at the end of 2020.
As it has strengthened its defences against Russia, Ukraine’s military spending has risen by 72 per cent since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Spending fell in 2021, to $5.9 billion, but still accounted for 3.2 per cent of the country’s GDP.
Continued Increases By Major Spenders In Asia And Oceania
The report added:
China, the world’s second largest spender, allocated an estimated $293 billion to its military in 2021, an increase of 4.7 per cent compared with 2020. China’s military spending has grown for 27 consecutive years. The 2021 Chinese budget was the first under the 14th Five-Year Plan, which runs until 2025.
Following initial approval of its 2021 budget, the Japanese Government added $7.0 billion to military spending. As a result, spending rose by 7.3 per cent, to $54.1 billion in 2021, the highest annual increase since 1972. Australian military spending also increased in 2021: by 4.0 per cent, to reach $31.8 billion.
‘China’s growing assertiveness in and around the South and the East China seas have become a major driver of military spending in countries such as Australia and Japan,’ said SIPRI Senior Researcher Dr Nan Tian. ‘An example is the AUKUS trilateral security agreement between Australia, the UK and the U.S. that foresees the supply of eight nuclear-powered submarines to Australia at an estimated cost of up to $128 billion.’
Other Notable Developments:
The SIPRI report mentioned notable developments in other countries, which include Iran, NATO members, Nigeria, Germany, Qatar, India. These are:
- In 2021 Iran’s military budget increased for the first time in four years, to $24.6 billion. Funding for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps continued to grow in 2021 — by 14 per cent compared with 2020 — and accounted for 34 per cent of Iran’s total military spending.
- EightEuropean North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members reached the Alliance’s target of spending 2 per cent or more of GDP on their armed forces in 2021. This is one fewer than in 2020 but up from two in 2014.
- Nigeriaraised its military spending by 56 per cent in 2021, to reach $4.5 billion. The rise came in response to numerous security challenges such as violent extremism and separatist insurgencies.
- Germany — the third largest spender in Central and Western Europe — spent $56.0 billion on its military in 2021, or 1.3 per cent of its GDP. Military spending was 1.4 per cent lower compared with 2020 due to inflation.
- In 2021 Qatar’smilitary spending was $11.6 billion, making it the fifth largest spender in the Middle East. Qatar’s military spending in 2021 was 434 per cent higher than in 2010, when the country last released spending data before 2021.
- India’s military spending of $76.6 billion ranked third highest in the world. This was up by 0.9 per cent from 2020 and by 33 per cent from 2012. In a push to strengthen the indigenous arms industry, 64 per cent of capital outlays in the military budget of 2021 were earmarked for acquisitions of domestically produced arms.
The report said: All percentage changes are expressed in real terms (constant 2020 prices) unless otherwise stated. Military expenditure refers to all government spending on current military forces and activities, including salaries and benefits, operational expenses, arms and equipment purchases, military construction, research and development, and central administration, command and support. SIPRI therefore discourages the use of terms such as ‘arms spending’ when referring to military expenditure, as this represents only one category of expenditure.
So, again France dribbled well, seven months ahead of the World Cup Football and escaped the trap of fascism, is it so? Many persons who are anxious of worldwideweb of fascism and its forward march were seen to be relieved and taking breath of respite. But there are, alas, many buts and we must visit some.
A point which might not be very important, but to be noted at least
If we see the results of the top five vote garnering candidates of 2017 presidential election round-1 vis-à-vis those of 2022 presidential election round-1 we shall see
Table – 1: Some Scores of Presidential Election 2017 & 2022, France
| 2017 | 2022 | |||||
| Macron | 86,56,346 | 24.01 | Macron | 97,83,058 | 27.85 | |
| Le Pen | 76,78,491 | 21.30 | Le Pen | 81,33,828 | 23.15 | |
| Fillion | 72,12,995 | 20.01 | Mélenchon | 77,12,520 | 21.95 | |
| Mélenchon | 70,59,951 | 19.58 | Zemmour | 24,85,226 | 7.07 | |
| Hamon | 22,91,288 | 6.36 | Pécresse | 16,79,001 | 4.78 | |
Now, the third one of the 2017 was Fillion of the Republicans, this time their candidate was Pécresse whose votes and vote % went down. The fifth one of 2017 was Hamon of Socialist Party, once who governed France, this time their votes and vote% went down to tenth position. Mélenchon of LFI increased. But last time the communist party there, PCF, did not contest the election and decided to support him, Mélenchon. This time PCF put up a candidate, who got into the eighth position, got 2.28% of votes, numerically more than 800,000.
Now, if, please do not mind this “if” — if PCF this time pulled its support towards Mélenchon, he could be the second highest scoring candidate surpassing what Mme Le Pen got in round 1, and the final round of presidential election could have been between Mélenchon and Macron, between La France Insoumise and La République En Marche! That could perhaps have been more spectacular at least an academic exercise.
It would be interesting to see how the PCF looks back at it.
Some dangers
In the second round the contest became more intense than last time:
Table 2: Round-2 French Presidential Election 2017 & 2022
| Candidate | 2017 | 2022 | ||
| Macron | 207,43,128 | 66.1 | 187,79,641 | 58.54 |
| Le Pen | 106,38,475 | 33.9 | 132,97,760 | 41.46 |
The openly fascist party increased its votes share from 33.9% to 41.5% (approx) a 7.6% increase. But that is only a superficial figure.
Luckily the market research agency IPSOS does some work which help students of sociology and other interested persons. From their two works on “sociologie des electorats” we can get some comparative insights.
Table 3: Work status and voting % French Presidential Election 2017 & 2022
| Tiers | Macron 17 | Le Pen 17 | Macron 22 | Le Pen 22 |
| Executives | 82 | 18 | 77 | 23 |
| Intermediate | 67 | 33 | 59 | 41 |
| Employee | 54 | 46 | 43 | 57 |
| Worker | 44 | 56 | 33 | 67 |
| Retired | 74 | 26 | 68 | 32 |
For IPSOS, worker or Ouvrier is a blue-collar unless otherwise stated. The blue-collar workforce, in the final round, had tilted for Le Pen in 2017 and their tilt increased further in 2022. And now, among ‘employees’ too, the majority tilted towards Le Pen.
We may see from another side, the absolute monetary side too.
Table 4: Monthly income and voting % French Presidential Election 2017 & 2022
| Monthly income | Macron 17 | Le Pen 17 | Macron 22 | Le Pen 22 |
| less than 1200 € | 55 | 45 | 44 | 56 |
| 1200-2000 € | 59 | 41 | 53 | 47 |
| 2000-3000 € | 64 | 36 | 56 | 44 |
| more than 3000 € | 75 | 25 | 65 | 35 |
Lesser the income more the tilt to far-rightist Le pen than rightist Macron.
Len Pen voters like last time were not “more religious” at all than Macron voters, rather the reverse came out in the survey.
There are many other interesting figures in the IPSOS surveys, but this time they added one feature: Selon La Satisfaction À L’égard De Sa Vie – according to satisfaction as regards their life. Among those who are “Insatisfait”, unsatisfied, 79% of such voters chose the fascists while voting for the second round, though only 63% of them went to cast votes and the rest abstained.
The electorate had two right wingers and the more unsatisfied shifted more towards fascists!
Do we have anything to learn from the French election results? Well, election results do not express much, but they show things like what people might like to do when there are no movements of classes and strata, when someone is trying to use the ballot to do or undo something in absence of any other way-out.
For readers who would like to consult those Ipsos documents, they can be had of from
https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/files-fr-fr/doc_associe/ipsos_sopra_steria_sociologie_des_electorats_7_mai_20h15_0.pdf
and
Sandeep Banerjee is an activist who writes on political and socioeconomic issues and also on environmental issues. Some of his articles are published in Frontier Weekly. He lives in West Bengal, India. Presently he is a research worker. He can be reached at sandeepbanerjee00@gmail.com
Those who pass between fleeting words
Take your names with you and go
Rid our time of your hours, and go
Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian poet
The occupation has become a fait accompli, and we had to face a new, bitter reality. Our situation has become like the situation in occupied Palestine. The priority for us is restoring everyday life despite the harshness of the situation. Because restoring life is a form of resistance. In the beginning, the Zionists did not dare to enter the camp.
They gathered young Palestinians in a Lebanese area near the camp tortured and arrested many of them. Then the Zionist patrols began to come daily to the camp. We saw them walking in one line for fear of attack, and their sight provoked feelings of enormous anger and hatred.
We looked at them and hoped that the ground would open up and swallow them up
Then they imposed a curfew inside the camp after seven o’clock in the evening. It was hard for a person to feel he is a prisoner in his home. But I used to break it and go stealthily to visit my closest neighbors. When I moved, the neighbors would warn me that a Zionist patrol had passed a short time ago.
I used to visit Muhammad, who was a UNRWA teacher. He was a kind man and often smiled with little talk. I would sneak out of my parents’ house to visit him. Then Abu Zeidan would join us.
Abu Zeidan was a funny person, and he was joking all the time as if there was nothing. We sit in front of the house but behind a wall away from the road and talk slowly.
At night it was the absolute horror. I use the word “horror” in all its meanings. If someone needs to cough, he does the coughing on the pillow for fear of making a sound.
At night when we heard the howling of the camp dogs, we know that Zionists are coming to arrest someone.
We could hear their voices speaking in Hebrew and screaming, as happened once when they came to arrest a neighbor. Their voices were disgusting. For us, it is the language of death.
I moved through internal roads even during the day, and the residents warned me if a Zionist patrol had passed from there. The Zionists would arrest anyone they meet on the road.
At this time, Beirut was being bombarded day and night by Zionist planes. Fierce battles were taking place in the Khalde area on the outskirts of Beirut, and the Zionist planes were using vacuum bombs to destroy buildings. Despite the barbarism of the Zionist bombing, the Zionist tanks were unable to advance because of the fierce resistance.
The news was very worrying. We believed that the Soviet Union might intervene to pressure Israel. But none of this happened. Israel got an American green light for invasion and killing, and it was carrying out this task with the highest rate of barbarism.
I spent most of the time with my friend Nazmi, who could no longer go back to the Arab Emirates to teach there as he was before the invasion. Also with his cousin Abu Saleh, the respected man who died a few years later and was working as a school guard in UNRWA schools.
Naif, the blacksmith, lives next to Nazmi house, where we used to meet in the daytime. Salam, a teacher, would come, and we would sit and play cards in an inner room for fear of making a sound.
Shaker, a Palestinian from the West Bank, was also with us and always warning us not to talk loud. I had many conversations with him about Marxist thought because we shared the belief in this thought.
Shaker’s wife was a resident of the camp, so he became a resident of the camp later. Later on, Shaker was arrested, and he remained for a year and a half in Ansar jail. But after the Oslo agreement between the PLO and Israel, he returned to the West Bank, where he is still there.
One of the situations that I will never forget is Abu Riyad, the owner of the largest store in the camp, which was destroyed.
I once saw him standing on the side of a road.
Nearby are boxes of tomatoes and fruits that he sells. Abu Riyad told me that no matter how much the Zionists destroy material things, they will never eliminate the Palestinian dream of liberation.
Abu Riyad passed away about a year ago. He was a proud Palestinian man. He always told us about his memories in Palestine. Sometimes he was silent as he remembered the young men of the village killed by the Zionists. They buried the martyrs in a cave, hoping to be buried later. But the Zionists expelled them from their village, and the martyrs remained in the cave, waiting a day for the uprooted Palestinians to come back home.
Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian Norwegian researcher, lecturer playwright and poet, wrote more than 17 books such as Perspectives on thought, culture and political sociology, in thought, culture and ideology, the road to Baghdad. Palestine in heart
Boy, all you hear from both sides of the Two Party/One Party dribble, along with their embedded mainstream media, is how we are a ‘ Democracy’. Then they preach, according to which side of the right wing sphere they inhabit, how ‘ Our democracy is under threat.’ According to the Open Secrets website, the total money spent on Congressional and Presidential races in 2016 was a whopping $ 7 billion plus. In this past election cycle ( 2020 ) it was double that ( $ 14 billion plus). Imagine folks like the activist union member who earns $ 50k a year, and wishes to run as an independent candidate. How can he or she get voters to even know the platform proposed when the two major party candidates outspend by a factor of minimum of 10 X 1 ? Edward Bernays made it clear over 100 years ago that ‘ Advertising works’ , and it takes money… lots of money. That is why Corporate America controls the **** that is fed via the boob tube to influence consumers (Just note the slew of Big Pharma commercials that saturate the airwaves, in reality selling sickness NOT health). Thus, the super rich who run corporate America AKA This Empire use the airwaves and media in general to push their right wing agenda. Sad.
Don’t you just love it when ALL the Two Party/One Party pundits hammer this disgraceful refrain about our country wanting to ‘ Spread Democracy throughout the world’. They did some job in Iraq didn’t they? Ditto for Afghanistan and Libya, along with Syria and many South American nations. Wherever one looks one can see the imprint of this military’s jackboot on the necks of the citizens of those countries. Since WW2 we have been doing it so long that few here at home even realize it. What was the collateral damage ( a phrase the War Mongers love to use) of our overt and covert instigations or outright occupations ? Well, in Europe the mess of a USA created ‘ Refugee Crisis ‘ was tantamount to fueling their terrible Neo Fascist ( and even Neo Nazi) movements. Wherever you turn in Western and Eastern Europe… even Scandinavia, the anger generated by the influx of refugees ( mostly folks of darker colors than the nation in question) has spurred this phony right wing ‘ Populism’. As with the Trump phenomena here, it is all BS!! As usual, it is populism generated by the super rich at the expense of the everyday working stiffs who drink that Kool-Aid. The ‘ evil ‘ Mexican drug dealers, rapists and murderers are on par with how those across the pond see their problem.
Listening to that Neo Con tool, National Public Radio in my car, they repeat the crap so many of my fellow citizens have been buying. The segment was on how a ‘ Liberal Democratic ‘ candidate in Pennsylvania for the Senate was ‘ troubling ‘ the party leaders. ” They said that he may be too liberal ,turning off the voters and hurting Democratic chances of winning the seat.” Now, this was not about issues like gender rights or abortion, or Black Lives Matter ( co-opted by the Democrats to a large extent). Perhaps this candidate was wanting better rights and conditions for workers, Medicare for All of us, taking money from the rabbit hole of obscene military spending, transferring it to strengthen the Safety Net… just to name a few. Since the national Democratic Party mirrors the greedy Republicans on the aforementioned, we will NEVER have a democracy.
In France you had the center/ right wing Macron winning from Ms. LePen, as close to a Fascist as one gets. That is how it works, just like here. You had Joe Biden, the quintessential Military Industrial Empire Democrat, winning from the Neo Fascist Medicine Man populist Trump, who bordered on Neo Nazi January 6th , 2021. The ‘ Movers and Shakers’ of this empire got just what they dreamed of. The Republicans, floating along with that Trump base made up of crazy evangelicals, white supremacists and outright wannabe brown shirts, continue to move the moral compass to the far right. Then the Democrats , kinder and gentler, simply ask us, the level headed and caring public, to choose them to stop the bleeding. And , to some extent, they are actually correct! So, yes, the bleeding may cease for awhile, but the wound never heals! Isn’t that what democracy is all about? If we really seek a true democracy then the only solution is to get ALL private money OUT of electoral politics. We need public funding of ALL elections, local, state and federal. With perhaps five or ten times the number of registered candidates for any office…
Philip A Farruggio is regular columnist on It’s the Empire… stupid website. He is also frequently posted on Nation of Change, Countercurrents., Smirking Chimp and Independent Australia sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid ‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at paf1222@bellsouth.net.
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