Ukraine updates: Russia might strive taking Kharkiv — Zelenskyy
For every man, woman and child, annual world military spending is now at its highest rate since the end of the Cold War, at $306 (€281) per person, DW has reported.
Global military budgets reached $2.44 trillion (€2.25 trillion) last year, nearly 7% higher than in 2022, a sum that includes massive Western military aid to Ukraine as it tries to fight off the full-scale Russian invasion that began in February 2022.
Largely spurred on by the Russian threat, NATO‘s European partners are projected to meet the target set by the military alliance of spending 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense.
Poland, which borders on Ukraine, is due to spend 4.2% of GDP on defense this year, the highest in the military alliance. Others on NATO’s eastern flank also far exceed or will soon surpass the 2% target, due to the heightened security threat on their borders.
As DW points out, governments are having to confront tough questions on how to pay for the new defense commitments, with many economies weakened by the effects of the ongoing global geopolitical tensions and lingering consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Short-term commitments for military equipment for Ukraine should be financed with additional debt. That’s the way wars have historically been funded,” Gunther Wolff, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, told DW. “But for longer-term increased defense spending, either taxes need to go up or you cut other spending.”
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