Global military expenditure has hit $2.887 trillion, and rising. Governments are choosing weapons over welfare at a scale not seen since the Cold War.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported this week what many feared: the world has never spent more money preparing to kill. At $2.887 trillion in 2025, global military expenditure broke every record ever set, and the trajectory points unmistakably upward.
The United States alone spent $954 billion last year. That figure, staggering on its own, is already obsolete. Congress has approved over $1 trillion for 2026, and the Trump administration’s proposed FY2027 Pentagon budget of $1.5 trillion, a 42 percent increase in a single year, would be the largest defense request in American history. For context, this is not a wartime emergency budget. It is a peacetime aspiration.
“Don’t send any money for daycare… We’re fighting wars.”, President Trump, April 1, 2026
Europe Rearming at Cold War Speed
Europe is not standing still. The continent’s 29 NATO members spent a combined $559 billion in 2025. Increases were not incremental, they were seismic. Belgium’s military budget surged 59 percent in a single year. Spain rose 50 percent, Norway 49 percent, Denmark 46 percent. Germany — raising its budget 24 percent to $114 billion, is now the world’s fourth-largest military spender and has explicitly pledged to build “the strongest conventional army in Europe.” SIPRI called it the sharpest annual rise in Western European arms spending since the end of the Cold War.
This rearmament is not abstract. Germany’s new military strategy, the first comprehensive Bundeswehr doctrine in the postwar era, calls for reorganizing “state, economy and society” for total defence and openly discusses reintroducing conscription. Meanwhile, Japan lifted its decades-long ban on lethal weapons exports, began stationing long-range missiles within firing range of mainland China, and is pursuing constitutional amendments to gut Article 9, its pacifist clause. Asia and Oceania’s military spending rose 8.1 percent to $681 billion.
The trade-off is direct and deliberate. Trump’s $1.5 trillion Pentagon proposal would be financed in part by a 10 percent cut to non-defense discretionary spending, healthcare, housing, scientific research, and education. At an Easter luncheon, the President told his budget director plainly not to fund daycare, because “we’re fighting wars.” SIPRI researchers explicitly warned that this global diversion of resources will mean cuts to social services, healthcare, and development assistance worldwide.
Ukraine, the most extreme case, is spending 63 percent of all government expenditure on its military, the highest proportion in the world for four consecutive years. Russia allocates 7.5 percent of its GDP, or $190 billion, to war. In both countries, military spending as a share of government budgets has hit the highest levels ever recorded. Civilians, hospitals, and schools receive what’s left over.
A Draft on the Horizon
Maybe the scariest indication was a rather silent one that occurred in December 2025 when Trump signed the law that will automatically enroll all American men between 18 and 26 years old in the Selective Service System, which is the legal basis of a military draft. The law will be implemented in December 2026. No significant political opposition arose; the Democrats’ leaders have been backing almost every National Defense Authorization Act for 10 years and have indicated that they will not oppose the $1.5 trillion spending request.
The machinery of mass mobilization is being assembled in plain sight. The United States is spending $17.5 billion on missile defence, $65.8 billion on shipbuilding, and $74 billion on drones. China spent an estimated $336 billion. Taiwan’s military budget jumped 14 percent, its largest single-year increase since at least 1988. SIPRI researchers conclude bluntly: “This growth will probably continue through 2026 and beyond.”
When governments choose to measure security in dollars and missiles rather than schools and hospitals, they are not protecting people, they are preparing to sacrifice them. The record books are being rewritten. The question is what it will cost to stop.
