Description:
Every year, BICC’s Global Militarisation Index (GMI) maps the relative weight and importance of a country’s military apparatus in relation to its society as a whole. The Index is financially supported by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Its first part reflects current developments and trends based on the latest available data. It covers 154 states and is based on the latest available figures (in most cases, data for 2021). The ten countries with the highest level of militarisation in the GMI 2022 are Israel, Kuwait, Armenia, Singapore, Oman, Bahrain, Greece, Russia, Brunei and Saudi Arabia. These countries allocate particularly large amounts of resources to their military compared to other areas of society. As far as the general militarisation trend is concerned, the GMI 2022 offers a seemingly contradictory picture. It appears that the general upward trend of the previous years is not continuing. This is mainly due to the drop in relative military expenditure, which, measured as a share of GDP (gross domestic product), fell on average from 2.3 to 2.2 per cent, which, in turn, is mainly due to the economic recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, despite a positive population trend, the number of heavy weapons increased in relative and absolute terms, reaching 396,914 this year, a figure last measured in 2012. The second part of the GMI focuses on two regional aspects. For one, we will investigate the planned enlargement of NATO to include Sweden and Finland as member states. Using the three GMI parameters of personnel, financial resources and heavy weapons, we compare NATO with Russia and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO). In addition, we take up the 100 billion special fund for the Bundeswehr and sketch out two different scenarios for the militarisation of Germany for the next five years. This year, the conflict between China, Taiwan and the so-called AUKUS countries (Australia, United Kingdom and United States) in the China Sea and the Pacific Ocean continued to escalate. The second regional focus is, therefore, on East Asia and Oceania. Here, we contrast the military potential of the AUKUS countries with that of China. We estimate the degree of militarisation of North Korea and Taiwan, two key countries in the regional conflict. However, as this estimate is based on divergent or older data sources, it is not included in the GMI dataset or the official ranking. This year, the GMI has also evolved methodologically: We complemented the Heavy Weapons Index by including unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) and loitering munitions (so-called kamikaze drones) as well as satellites.