Military Spending Rises Fastest in Asia, Eastern Europe

Asian countries like India and China have grown their defense expenditure steadily over the past 15 years. Comparing to the economies of the respective countries, however, expenditure has grown roughly in line with GDP since 2013 and stood at around 2.4 percent in India and 1.7 percent in China last year. Along with their large neighbors' military prowess, other countries in Asia have also seen military spending grow rapidly. This applies to countries close to regional security hot spot the South China Sea, for example Cambodia and the Philippines. To a lesser degree, East Asian nations like Japan and of course Taiwan itself also saw rising military expenditures.

After Russia's invasion, Eastern Europe is another region where military spending has increased and it did so more abruptly than in Asia - driven by Ukraine where the military now takes up more than a third of GDP. North American military expenditure has fluctuated, but remains the biggest regional budget with the large majority of spending tied to the U.S. military. Western Europe's spending - often criticized for being too low in comparison to the countries' sizes and GDPs - has seen only a slight uptick since the start of the Ukraine war, but had already been growing steadily before the current crisis.

Spending in Latin America and Africa remained stable overall. Some African nations have also grown their defense spending quickly. These include Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Mauritania. Spending was also up in Mexico.