LONDON: Asia’s defense spending overtook Europe’s for the first time last year, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said yesterday, reflecting China’s military rise and shrinking European economies.
In its annual report on the world’s militaries, it said China’s defense spending in real terms rose 8.3 percent between 2011 and 2012, while in Asia as a whole, spending rose 4.94 percent last year.
At the same time, nominal defense spending among European NATO members had shrunk to around 2006 levels due to budget cuts, the IISS said in “The Military Balance 2013.”
“Indeed, the increase in Asian spending has been so rapid, and the defense austerity pursued by European states so severe, that in 2012 nominal Asian spending ($287.4 billion) exceeded total official defense spending not just in NATO Europe, but across all of Europe, including spending by non-NATO European states,” it said.
The IISS, however, played down Washington’s planned “pivot” to Asia, saying that it had announced only limited new military deployments there while reducing in its forces in Europe. “But as far as Asia was concerned there was less to this rebalance than first appeared,” the report said.
It also noted the United States continued to dominate defense spending, accounting for 45.3 percent of the global total.
Asian countries have been steadily raising defense spending, using resilient economic growth to fund militaries able to cope with an increasingly complex regional environment.
Asia’s defense spending overtakes Europe’s
