While the world may be edging towards peace, you would not think so when looking at the 20 countries with highest military spending in the world. War scholars tend to refer to our current era as the ‘long peace’, a term which seems an overstatement when you consider the death and destruction that is going in the world. However, this is in comparison to the previous couple of centuries, times where wars were waged on a whim, and human life seemingly had no value. With countries establishing proper diplomatic relations, negotiations and verbal discussions have taken precedence over war, as it should be.
At the same time, countries know that with increasing technology, they are vulnerable to outside threats. Most countries may not be at war, but they still spend a significant amount improving there defense systems in order to combat any threats which may arise. This is evidenced by the fact that world military spending has increased in the last year by 2.6%, a huge amount when you’re talking in trillions of dollars. And while 2019 hasn’t ended and the figures for the entire year aren’t available, military spending by country in 2019 will undoubtedly increase when compared with military spending by country in 2018. This makes sense when you consider arms deals that countries make for billions of dollars. Of course, the United States is the king when it comes to military spending, which is why if you compare the US military budget vs other countries’, there is literally no competition. If you want to know more about our 2017 rankings you can visit 15 countries with highest defense spending and largest military budgets.
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In this article if we ranked the 20 countries with highest military spending in the world, the biggest and richest countries would have easily dominated the list. This is why we used two criteria, namely military spending as a percent of country GDP and their total spending. We ranked each country separately for each criteria, the data for which was obtained from the World Bank, and then calculated the average ranking to come up with our list. This allowed for a more accurate reflection in the rankings, as using multiple criteria helps cancel out bias which may be present. So let’s begin with our list, which may contain a few surprises as well:
20. Morocco
Military spending: $3,696,856,945
Morocco increased its military budget by almost 30% this year, thereby earning its ranking on this list. This increase in budget was due to the hiring of additional recruits as well as the improvements in salary of the existing army officials.
Pixabay/Public Domain
