The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has published its latest report on the state of the global arms trade and arms spending. According to the data cited in it, in 2014 in the global volume of military spending, Russia accounted for 4.8%, which puts it in third place after the United States (34%) and China (12%). At the same time, according to the report, the military spending of our country increased last year compared to 2013 by 8.1% and amounted to $ 84.5 billion, or 4.5% of GDP. At the same time, the researchers of the institute stipulate that "Russia was planning this increase even before the crisis in Ukraine." In addition, due to the reduction in oil revenues, the country's defense budget was adjusted downward by 5%.
The United States has also cut its expenses. With the largest military expenditures in the world (almost 3 times higher than the Chinese ones), they reduced their military spending by 6.5% in 2014. This was done as one of the measures to tackle the budget deficit identified by legislators under the 2011 Budget Control Act. "Nevertheless, according to the SIPRI researchers, in this area the United States continues to be at a historically high level, which almost corresponds in real terms to the peak level of the late 1980s." In total, Washington spent 610 billion for military purposes, or 3.5% of GDP. Defense budget cuts are expected to continue in 2015, but less dramatically. After reaching the highest volume in 2010, military spending fell 19.8% in real terms.
China's military spending, according to SIPRI estimates, kept pace with the pace of development of its economy, steadily maintaining the percentage of GDP in the past decade - from 2 to 2, 2%. In absolute terms, the indicator increased by 9.7% and amounted to $ 216 billion.
As noted in the report, Ukraine's spending in 2014 increased by 23% and amounted to, according to preliminary estimates, 4 billion "green". “This estimate probably does not include all the costs of the war, and the final figure could be higher,” the document says. In 2015, Ukraine, researchers say, plans to double spending on armaments.
NUMBERS FOR REFLECTION
The SIPRI report contains many other interesting figures, observations and conclusions. For example, it notes that global military budgets have been cut for the third year in a row.
The governments of all countries have spent about $ 2 trillion on military purposes. More precisely, $ 1 trillion 776 billion, which is 0.4% less than in 2013. The percentage is small, but optimistic, especially since it is only 2.4% of global GDP. True, if we compare this figure to the expenditures of the United States and Russia in relation to their GDP, then this comparison will not be in favor of either Washington or Moscow. Moreover, considering the difference in the volumes of their gross domestic product.
One more observation, which, as it seems to the author of this material, is emphasized by the SIPRI researchers. The fact that military spending against the background of the Ukrainian crisis is increasing those states that are in close proximity to the borders of Russia. Namely, the countries of Central Europe, the Baltic States and Scandinavia (for example, Poland and Estonia spend respectively $ 10.4 billion and $ 430 million - 1.9% and 2% of GDP). And in other states, even despite the calls of the NATO leadership to increase their contribution to the overall defense to 2% of GDP, no one is in a hurry to do this.
One gets the impression (this idea belongs to a journalist, not to SIPRI researchers) that the leading Western states and their leaders, despite the campaign launched in their own mass media to intimidate the population with "Russian aggression and the Russian nuclear threat", in fact do not believe in it and they feel quite comfortable behind the backs of the Eastern European neighbors that are intimidated by this threat. And they are in no hurry to bring their financial contribution to the common wallet of the North Atlantic Alliance to the required interest. The richest countries in Europe - France, Germany, Italy and Spain - have the lowest defense spending relative to their GDP.
The authors of the report, Sam Perlo-Freeman and Jan Grebe, stipulate that the data for their materials, according to the tradition adopted at the Stockholm Institute for Peace Research, they take from open sources, for example, from state budgets with their official defense spending. And although the specific indicators of 2014 do not allow making any far-reaching conclusions, the trends caused by the Ukrainian crisis are already noticeable. At the same time, they warn against hasty interpretation of the document. “This development should not be directly linked to Russian policy,” says Jan Grebe. "In many countries, the qualitative improvement of the armed forces was a common measure of modernization for them."
This statement is quite true both for the countries of Eastern Europe, which continue to replace the old Soviet weapons with military equipment produced at the enterprises of NATO states, and for Russia. After many years of a certain stagnation, the beginning of research and development work, it approached the process of state and military testing of new products of its weapons and launching them into serial production. Everyone could see the first samples of this military equipment at the Victory Parade on May 9 in Moscow on Red Square. This is a new medium tank T-14 based on the new unified tracked platform "Armata", a new infantry fighting vehicle and a new armored personnel carrier on the same platform, unified tracked infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers "Kurganets-25", wheeled armored personnel carrier "Boomerang", tracked armored personnel carrier paratroopers "Shell", off-road and armored vehicles "Typhoon", strategic mobile missile system RS-24 "Yars" and other vehicles, airplanes and helicopters. All this equipment, the authors of the SIPRI report are right, began to be developed at the end of the first decade of this century, and only now the time has come for its deployment to the troops, which means an increase in the cost of purchasing it. Which has nothing to do with the civil war in Ukraine.
And yet the Ukrainian crisis, which led to a fratricidal war in the southeast of this country and in which many Western countries are involved in one way or another, and, in its own way, of course, Russia, could not but lead to an increase in military spending - both direct, and indirect, even indirect.
FOCUS ON THE UKRAINIAN CRISIS
NATO politicians and generals accuse Russia of waging a so-called hybrid war in Ukraine. This means that in order to achieve its goals in this war (in their opinion, to prevent Kiev from becoming a member of the North Atlantic Alliance and the European Union, to keep Independent in Moscow's sphere of influence with all the ensuing consequences), it uses all possible political, diplomatic, economic, financial, military, informational, psychological and special methods.
Let's not argue now about who is waging a hybrid war and against whom. Moscow against Kiev, Brussels and Washington, or all this "trinity" against Moscow. The author of this material is deeply convinced that the policy and program of the "Eastern Partnership" developed by the European Union with the support and participation of the United States with an emphasis on Ukraine, the Maidan, which was the soloist, which was fueled by leading politicians from Washington, Berlin, Warsaw and Vilnius,support for the Nazis from the "Right Sector" and their nominees Turchinov, Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko, who sent troops to pacify the recalcitrant Donbass - all this was the result of a hybrid war that the West organized only to tear the Independent from Russia, squeeze it out of Crimea and Sevastopol Russian Black Sea Fleet and take its place with its military bases on the peninsula, in the underbelly of the Russian Federation. But now is not about that.
It is just that, in the opinion of a military journalist, it is impossible to calculate, or, more precisely, it is not entirely correct to calculate the expenditures on the armed forces of this or that European, and not only European, country that is a member of the Alliance or has nothing to do with it, only in terms of official budget expenditures. and from open sources in the media. Isn't information and psychological campaigns aimed at demonizing the Russian leadership and the Russian armed forces, allegedly waving a nuclear baton in front of European inhabitants, not part of this hybrid war? Should the costs of this campaign be included in defense spending or not? Or do they go to another department - not military, but propaganda? But there are still no official ministries of information and propaganda in most Western states, and work in this direction is underway. Especially against our country. And what a!
Should these costs include the sanctions that Washington announced against Moscow, and under its pressure - the EU countries and Kiev, which to some extent affected the production of Russian military products? Not only did they backfire on the states themselves and their defense enterprises, which actively cooperated with the Russian Ministry of Defense, deprived them of their legitimate earnings, such as several leading companies in Germany, including Rheinmetall, or DCNS, which built in French Saint- Nazere has two helicopter carriers for Russia, and now she will have to return more than a billion euros to her. In addition, Moscow's retaliatory sanctions against those EU countries that shortsightedly submitted to the Washington dictate, led to losses for local producers of meat, dairy and agricultural products.
ACCOUNTS FOR HYBRID OPERATIONS
And one more question. And how much does it cost the EU and NATO countries last year's September summit of the North Atlantic Alliance in Wales, which officially announced a decisive opposition to Moscow on all fronts - increased the number of exercises in the Baltic States, Poland, in the air over the Baltic Sea and in the sea areas of the same Baltic, Black, The Norwegian and Barents seas? Disembarkation of American tank crews in the port of Riga? Maneuvers of the armies of the Scandinavian countries in the Arctic with the participation of the troops of the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, neutral Switzerland, Germany and France, which began on May 25 and will last until June 5? 115 aircraft of various purposes are taking part in them directly at the Russian air and sea borders, 90 of which will be in the air at the same time, and 3600 personnel. Are these expenses included in the decreasing / increasing military budgets of the countries studied by SIPRI or not? The question is, as they say, for filling.
Do SIPRI scientists take into account the costs of Western countries for special operations and cyber operations? From time to time we read in the press that some Russian hackers have hacked the closed sites of the North Atlantic Alliance or the Pentagon. But for some reason there are no leaks about the fact that the same operations are carried out against our state and military organizations by specialists from the US and NATO cyber forces.
I guess it's not very decent for us to talk about them. And in Brussels and Washington they claim that they are only defending themselves. What is impossible to believe.
I am not writing these notes in order to reproach the SIPRI researchers for the unreliability or incompleteness of the report they published the other day. I am convinced of their scientific conscientiousness and objectivity, which, in principle, is inherent in the Stockholm Institute, its employees and partners. It's just that, in the author's opinion, modern military statistics, for all their usefulness and necessity for various purposes, are not always capable of realistically reflecting all the complex bookkeeping of war and military expenditures in their entirety.
A lot of complex and invisible factors work for the army and victory in battle, in competitive struggle, in political confrontation. Only an integrated analysis of their interdependence and mutual influence can suggest a more or less objective answer to the problem posed. And even then not always. Apparently, because this is an area of more ambiguous calculations.
