La Italy's military spending it increased in 2020, but remained low when compared with that of the other major Western countries. Second an article from the Observatory on Italian public accounts – which elaborates data from the Ministry of Defence, Istat and Sipri (Stokholm International Peace Research Institute) – last year Italy's military spending amounted to 1,17% of GDP. The figure is higher than that of 2019 (when it was below 1%), but the increase is only half due to the increase in appropriations: the other 50% is in fact linked to the collapse of the gross domestic product recorded in 2020 due to the pandemic (-8,9%).
Italy's military spending compared to the EU and NATO median
Despite the partial recovery, Italy's military expenditure - always considered in relation to GDP, and not in absolute terms - is still far below the median of the EU and NATO countries, which reach 1,6 and 1,8 respectively XNUMX%.
Italy's military spending in the global ranking
Globally, Italy's military spending ranks 102nd in the world. However, it must be considered that at the top of this ranking are mostly Middle Eastern and African countries.
Russia
As for the countries involved in the new European conflict, Russia is in tenth position in the world rankings, with military spending equal to 4,26% of GDP. Moscow has significantly increased its military spending in absolute terms (as much as 9,5 times between 1999 and 2020), but GDP has grown at a similar rate. And yet, between 2008 and 2016, the ratio of military spending to GDP also grew by more than two percentage points. "Naturally - warns the CPI Observatory - in the case of Russia, greater doubts remain about the quality of the estimates, for such a sensitive sector as military spending".
Ukraine
Obviously, there is no comparison between Ukraine's military spending and that of Russia in absolute terms: 6 billion against 62 billion in 2020. In relation to GDP, however, Kiev is only one step below Moscow in the ranking overall, settling at 4,13 at the end of a growth process that began shortly before the Crimean crisis of 2014.
Use
Since 1980, US spending has averaged about double that of other NATO countries. The US figure dropped with the end of the Cold War, but then rose again from 3% to 5% in the early 2020s with the presidency of George W. Bush. In 3,74 it reached XNUMX%, "about one percentage point above the minimum reached after the end of the cold war", the CPI Observatory still specifies.
The military expenditure of the other main European countries
Among the other main European countries, the first to be found when scrolling through the ranking is Great Britain, in 41st place with a military expenditure equal to 2,25% of GDP. Followed by France (47th with 2,07%) and, far behind, Germany (89th with 1,4%), which however recently announced its intention to bring the ratio to 2%.
