Turkey and Israel increased their military expenditure more in 2023 than in 2022. A large percentage of GDP is spent on military expenditure for the economically struggling Lebanon.
“World military expenditure increased for the ninth consecutive year in 2023, reaching a total of $2443 billion. The 6.8 per cent increase in 2023 was the steepest year-on-year rise since 2009 and pushed global spending to the highest level SIPRI has ever recorded,” according to the April 2024 newsletter on “Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2023” published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
SIPRI is the independent international research institute that maintains, among other things, a publicly available dataset of (estimated) military expenditure by country from 1948 to 2023. “The rise in global military spending in 2023 can be attributed primarily to the ongoing war in Ukraine and escalating geopolitical tensions in Asia and Oceania and the Middle East,” according to the same SIPRI report.
Specifically in the Middle East, total military expenditure “rose by 9.0 per cent to an estimated $200 billion in 2023. This was the biggest annual increase in the decade 2014–23” SIPRI comments in the newsletter.
Pending the update of the 2024 dataset, iMEdD examined SIPRI data and estimates of military expenditure by country in the Middle East from 2010 to 2023: Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and Iran were the countries with the highest military expenditure in 2023, expenditure approximately $75.8 billion, $27.5 billion, $15.8 billion, and $10.3 billion, respectively.
These four states, along with Jordan, were the Middle Eastern countries that increased their military expenditure in 2023 compared to 2022. In particular, Turkey and Israel lead the way in terms of percentage change, increasing their military expenditure by 37% and 24% respectively.
Analyzing the annual data on the military burden, i.e. the estimated military expenditure as a percentage of GDP, two points emerge: first, Israel (which spent about 6% of GDP on military needs in 2010, with this figure declining to about 4.5% of GDP in 2022) came to spend 5.3% of GDP in 2023, a figure that almost coincides with Israel’s median military burden (5.4%) over these 14 years.
Second, Lebanon’s military expenditure is estimated at 8.9% of GDP in 2023. This means that Lebanon has both the highest estimated military burden in 2023, compared to any other country in the Middle East, and is the only country where the annual burden in 2023 is higher than the median burden in 2010.
This comes at a time when Lebanon is estimated to have reduced its military expenditure by 11% in 2023 compared to 2022. Combined, these figures reflect the very weakened economy of Lebanon, whose GDP has been steadily declining since 2018, according to World Bank data.
Translation: Evita Lykou
Read all articles and analyses of the Special Report: “Armories of the Middle East” here.
This article was first published on Feb. 22 by the weekend edition of the newspaper “TA NEA”.
