7.9B Economic costs for maintaining Military power

• • A key part of being a superpower or emerging power is military strength 
  • This is essential in the utilisation of 'hard power'
  • Maintaining and expanding military resources is expensive
  • The US spent $801 billion on defence in 2021
  • China was second highest at estimated US$293 billion
  • In the US the defence budget accounts for 10% of all government spending
• Naval power:

  • The US currently has 296 ships in the Navy 
  • There is building political pressure to increase this to at least 355 
  • The UK has significantly decreased the Naval fleet since the 1950s but in 2020 Boris Johnson announced the intention to
  • European naval forces have decreased by approximately 32% since 1999
• Nuclear weapons:

  • There are currently nine nuclear powers 
  • In 2016 the UK government voted to replace its continuous at sea deterrent (CASD) by replacing the Vanguard submarines with new Dreadnought class submarines
  • NATOs nuclear deterrence policy states that the weapons are there to:

  
• Air power:

  • Much of the recent military focus has been on air power rather than naval power due to the speed of response
  • In 2021 the UK announced £700 million investment in new helicopters and transport aircraft 
  • US Air Force spending has increased from $164 billion in 2011 to $222 billion in 2022
• Intelligence services

  • Increasing terrorism risks have led to greater spending on the intelligence services
  • In the 12 years after the September 11th attacks on the US $500 million has been spent on the intelligence services
  • In 2021 it was announced the UK intelligence services would have a £0.7 billion increase in 2024/25
• Space exploration:

  • The US has by far the greatest expenditure on space exploration
  • The cost of NASA's new Artemis mission is predicted to be $93 billion up to 2025

  
• Questions about military spending

  • In superpowers and emerging powers, such as the US and the EU, the amounts of money spent on maintaining global military power is increasingly being questioned
  • One argument is that the focus of global influence is now on 'soft powers' and the relevance of the military is reduced
  • A second argument is that the money would be better spent on reducing poverty, infrastructure and healthcare rather than on 'hard power'