Military

7 Countries Spending Billions to Strengthen Their War Machines

Austin Smith

Published: October 21, 2024 9:30 am

Key Points:

• Japan and South Korea are raising defense budgets, with Japan focusing on AI.
• Iran and Israel are increasing military spending, with Iran advancing drone tech.
• Germany and Poland are boosting defense budgets, with Poland aiming for 5% of GDP.
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Edited Video Transcript:

Speaking of changing conflict and changing warfare, I’d like to look at militaries that are strengthening. It does seem like global conflicts are on the rise. We’re seeing an increase in military spending, not just from NATO countries.

We know that. You and I have talked about a lot of European nations increasing their NATO contributions, but also some Asian powers and some Middle Eastern powers.

So what is going on and which countries are strengthening their military today?

Sure. Yeah. Well, it was really interesting is, you know, we’ve talked a lot about NATO and two percent of GDP as a defense spending target.

And what we’re actually seeing is a knock on effect is that other nations that are not part of NATO are actually also using two percent as a guideline.

So Japan is one nation that has a pacifist constitution since nineteen forty five. But in more recent years, they’ve increasingly begun revising what self-defense actually truly means.

And that doesn’t necessarily mean just passively reacting to an aggressor. It could it could potentially mean taking proactive action.

So in that sense, Japan is plans in place to to reach two percent of GDP on defense spending, which is a huge increase when for years it was the self-defense forces were making do with about one point one percent.

So this is a gigantic increase.

South Korea as well are massively increasing their defense.

manufacturing capabilities. They’re now a leading manufacturer, you know, things like tanks and jet aircraft as well. The F-A-Fifty and the K-two tanker, you know, top notch weapon systems, and they’re growing in their global presence.

You know, we previously talked about the demographic challenges that East Asian countries are facing, and I think they The response to that is to really leverage technology as the answer.

And Japan is betting big on AI and automation. And history does show that Japan has the capacity to change rapidly.

If you go back to what Japan looked like in eighteen sixty eight sixty nine, they were essentially a medieval country and they became a modern market economy in a single generation because they had that will and capacity to change rapidly.

So I wouldn’t bet against them doing the same thing in the twenty first century as they face a demographic crisis with an aging population and unwillingness to to resort to some of the measures that we’ve seen in other countries.

Korea will be quite similar in the Middle East. Obviously, huge amount of tension, ongoing conflicts and things could spiral out of control.

So naturally, Iran and Israel are really ramping up their defense spending.

Before, I mean, the figures I saw for Israel, these will be out of date now because of the escalation, but they were spending two hundred sixty nine million dollars every single day to prosecute the war in Gaza.

So that is going to be increasing significantly. There’ll be more aid coming from the United States. But they are strengthening overall Iran are doing the same.

You know, they are you know, we talked about this lower barrier to entry for drone warfare. Iran’s another major player there. They really could have mastered the the cheap kamikaze drone.

That strike we saw a few days ago, that only represented a portion of Iran’s capabilities. The Iron Dome dealt with it pretty well, but some of those did get through.

So I think that’s something that both those nations are ramping up their militaries. They’re getting stronger.

So that’s kind of what we’ll see what’s going on there.

Germany is a leading member of NATO that for a very long time was lagging way behind that two percent goal, but they’ve now reached it.

But the problem is, despite the stated goal of strengthening the German army, it looks like it’s kind of a temporary measure because they have something called the debt break, which limits how much of a deficit Germany can run.

So they’re reaching the two percent now with a special fund that’s going to run out, I think, in twenty eight or twenty nine.

So beyond that, they might have to consider how they’re going to continue this strengthening process.

And again, domestic politics are going to come to play here as Germany is struggling to sort of win the political argument to keep supporting Ukraine, keep building up its military as populist voices are detracting from that.

And then staying in that kind of area, Poland, who we’ve talked about before, they’re far and away in terms of GDP percentage, the biggest spenders in NATO, but they are trying to expand beyond that.

They’re ramping up recruiting efforts. And I believe they’re going to try to target target five percent of GDP on defense spending, which is gigantic, even by increasing global standards.

So I’d say those are kind of the main militaries around the world that are strengthening the most, but most are to some extent.

And let’s just take a moment and pause there. So we’re talking about seven countries here, Japan, South Korea, Iran, Israel, Turkey, Poland and Germany.

Now, maybe Germany’s ramp up is somewhat temporary given the debt break you talked about.

But even still, let’s remove Germany from the equation. We’re talking about six major global powers.

These are not small military strength.

When we talk about a strengthening of military power here, we are also looking at sophisticated well-funded military ramp-up as well, which just puts a different degree of magnitude onto how much stronger these war machines are arguably becoming.