Record global military spending in 2023. And Biden adds US$95 billion for war!

Record broken in 2023! According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI, April 22), global military spending rose by 6.8% to US$2.4 trillion.

Never before have such sums been devoted to military budgets! Billions plundered from public services, benefiting the major companies in the arms industry (a market dominated by U.S. companies).

The U.S. military budget alone was $916 billion. In reality, more than $1 trillion, including military spending that is not accounted for in the “defense budget”. And that’s not about to decrease in 2024!

On April 20, the U.S. House of Representatives voted for an additional $95 billion military aid package, which Joe Biden had been clamoring for months.

Since November 2023, due to obstruction by Members of Congress linked to Donald Trump, the vote on this additional military spending had been blocked. But 48 hours before the vote, Trump declared that “the defense of Ukraine is important to the United States”, giving his supporters the green light to end their obstruction. Once again, the higher interests of the capitalist class have imposed themselves on all its representatives, Democrats and Republicans alike.

What’s in the $95 billion “package”, which must now be approved by the Senate?

– US$61 billion in additional military aid to Zelensky. This is in addition to the hundreds of billions already allocated by the Biden administration, the European Union and NATO members and allied countries.

– US$26 billion dollars in aid to Israel. A considerable sum: it represents almost eight times what the United States pays each year to the State of Israel (around US$3.3 billion dollars in the US. budget).

– And more than US$8 billion in aid to Taiwan and to U.S. war preparations against China.

Ninety-five billion to fuel the ongoing bloodbaths in Gaza and Ukraine … US$95 billion, while 37.9 million U.S. citizens live below the poverty line.

The great powers of Europe are not to be outdone. They have all increased their military spending, as has Putin’s Russia.

And as there’s never enough; on April 16 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) unanimously adopted a resolution calling for frozen Russian assets in Europe “to be transferred to a new fund for the reconstruction of Ukraine” (Euractiv, April 17).

No worker in Russia or elsewhere will be upset by the confiscation of Russian oligarchs’ “assets”. All the more so since, on the surface, it’s for a good cause: the “reconstruction” of Ukraine. Yet in truth, it’s all a lie! Lord George Faulkes, a member of the British Parliament, let the cat out of the bag, declaring that it was “necessary to spend more on arms and military assistance to Ukraine before considering the question of reconstruction”.

Washington, Brussels, Paris: money is pouring in for war… to the delight of arms industry shareholders.

Dominique Ferré