Global military spending at a record level: $2.9 trillion invested in 2025, Europe is rearming in the face of American disengagement

The year 2025 broke records in terms of military spending. The latter increased by 2.9% globally, despite a slight decline in American spending, according to the report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri). Thus, 2,900,000 million dollars were allocated to the military sector on a global scale during the last year. An increase partly explained by the presence of numerous armed conflicts in the world during the year 2025, but also by the particularly significant military expenditures of certain countries.

According to this report, the three main contributors remain the United States, China and Russia, which together represent more than half of global military spending, or $1.48 trillion in 2025. The report also notes that global military spending has never been so important for more than eleven years. The military burden (the share of national GDP devoted to military spending) is, for its part, the highest since 2009.

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Baisse côté américain, réarmement côté européen

Over the year 2025, the United States recorded a decrease of 7.5% compared to 2024. However, due to their large volume, the country still spent 954 billion euros. This drop is explained by the fact that no financial aid was sent to Ukraine, because this aid was not approved by the American presidency.

A reduction which should however be misleading, since the American Congress has approved spending of more than 1,000 billion dollars for 2026 and even projects 1,500 billion for 2027 if Donald Trump’s proposals were to be implemented. validated.

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It is on the European side that military spending is experiencing its largest increase, with 14% more compared to the previous year, bringing military spending to 684 billion euros in 2025.

Lorenzo Scarazzato, researcher at Sipri in the “Military spending and arms production” program, explains this increase by two major factors. “One is the ongoing war in Ukraine, and the other is the disengagement of the United States from Europe,” asserting that the latter “are pushing Europe to take more responsibility for its defense.”

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Among the European countries seeing strong increases, Germany (+24%), Spain (+50%, to the point of devoting 2% of its GDP to military spending, a first since 1994), Ukraine (+20%) and Russia (+5.9%).

Increase in spending on the Asian continent

Despite the current conflict in the Middle East since February 28, the reasons for the increase in military spending in Asia are quite different.

Indeed, in 2025, Israel and Iran have even reduced their military spending and the Middle East only records an increase of 0.1% in military spending over the whole year.

The increase is primarily due to Chinese policy. China has in fact increased its spending every year over the past three decades and will spend around $336 billion in 2025, according to a Sipri researcher.

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This significant increase therefore worries China’s main neighbors, notably Japan, which increased its military spending by 9.7% to reach $62.2 billion in 2025, as well as Taiwan, which increased its military spending by 14%.

The regional dynamic also extends to South Korea as well as Australia, which also plan to increase their military budgets as well as new investments in the field of the army.

“Everything shows that the world feels less secure and is spending more on its armed forces in order to face the global context,” summarized Lorenzo Scarazzato.