In real terms spending is down half a percent from 2011.

 

　　These latest figures on spending have been released by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI.

 

　　CRI's Chen Xuefei reports from Sweden.

 

　　Global military spending fell in 2012 to 1.75 trillion US dollars, that is about 2.5 percent of global gross domestic product or GDP. Although the fall was only half a percent in real terms, this was the first decrease since 1998. Elisabeth Shons, former program leader of the military expenditure and arms production in SIPRI and co-author of the paper explained why the expenditure decreased.

 

　　"The main reason is that the military expenditure in the United States has fallen. And the reason to that is the end of the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, we saw withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in December 2011 and there is an ongoing drawdown of military forces from Afghanistan. So logically military spending in the United States should decrease rather drastically. We have not seen that yet. Possibly this will come in the future. There is a major and controversial debate about that in the United States right now."

 

　　Skons said that the decrease of military spending in Europe was due to the change of security policies and austerity policies in western Europe.

 

　　However, the global total is still higher in real terms than the peak near the end of the cold war. The attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 prompted 8 years of rapidly increasing spending led by the US.

 

　　The US and its allies are still responsible for the great majority of world military spending. The NATO members together spent a trillion US dollars in military expenditure.

 

　　In regional comparison, Americas' military spending doubles that of Asia and Oceania's total while Europe's spending stood at 407 billion dollars, second to Americas.

 

　　The US military spending stood at 682 billion dollars in 2012, going a little below 40 percent of the world's total for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union. But it's still nearly 70 percent more than that in 2001.

 

　　Since the 2008 global financial crisis, 18 of the 31 countries in the European Union or European NATO have cut military spending by more than 10 percent in real terms.

 

　　Military spending in Eastern Europe increased by 15.3 percent in 2012, the largest regional increase. Besides Russia, Ukraine also increased its spending substantially—by 24 percent.

 

　　For CRI, this is Chen Xuefei reporting from Stockholm.