Global Military Spending Dataset

The world has become much more peaceful, and yet, even after adjusting for inflation, global military spending is now three times greater than at the height of the Cold War. These developments have motivated a renewed interest from both policy makers and scholars about the drivers of military spending and the implications that follow. Existing findings on the relationship between threat and arming and arms races and war hinge on the completeness and accuracy of existing military spending data. Moreover, data on military spending is used to measure important concepts from international relations such as the distribution of power, balancing, the severity of states’ military burdens, and arms races. Everything we know about which states are most powerful, whether nations are balancing, and whether military burdens and arms races are growing more or less severe rests on the accuracy of existing military spending estimates.

尽管当今世界已愈发和平，但经通胀调整后，全球军事开支如今已是冷战巅峰时期的三倍。这一现状再度引发政策制定者与学者对军事开支驱动因素及其后续影响的关注。现有关于威胁与军备建设、军备竞赛及战争之间关系的研究结论，均取决于现有军事开支数据的完整性与准确性。此外，军事开支数据还被用于衡量国际关系领域的诸多重要概念，例如权力分配、均势制衡、国家军事负担的沉重程度以及军备竞赛等。我们目前对于哪些国家实力最强、各国是否在实施制衡行为，以及军事负担与军备竞赛的严峻程度是加剧还是缓解的所有认知，均建立在现有军事开支估算数据的准确性之上。