The beast with a billion arms

A walk through global arms transfer data, where the US still dominates

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) is the most cited authoritative source on defense spending in general and arms transfers (military trade) in specific.

I used the Perplexity AI-driven search engine to parse the 2023 material and this is what I came up with — sheerly out of curiosity. I am primarily interested in comparing the five 21st century superpowers that I identify in America’s New Map — namely, the US, EU, Russia, India, and China.

Global arms transfers (exports)

The clear global leader here remains the US, accounting for roughly 40% of all arms transfers (a jump from our recently steady one-third share). The Saudis are our top customer, followed by Japan and Qatar. Clearly, Ukraine’s share is shooting up right now.

If you add up NATO’s European members, they ring in at roughly one-quarter, giving the alliance as a whole a majority share of global transfers (roughly two-thirds) but understanding that a lot of those transfers occur within the alliance.

Europe’s top targets for arms transfers are India, Qatar, Egypt, Ukraine, and Israel.

Of the five, pre-Ukraine Russia would come in third at just over a one-fifth share. After invading Ukraine and depleting its military stocks so rapidly, that share has been cut in half to one-tenth of global exports. Russia was, for a long time during the post-Cold War era, #1 in the world for arms exports, but its share has dropped significantly going back to the late 2010s (France recently surpassed it, like the US did in 2018-2019). Its war with Ukraine is certainly dropping its share further. Russia used to supply China big-time but Beijing has substituted substantially with domestically produced arms (a reality having nothing to do with the Ukraine war). As we will see below, Moscow used to be India’s biggest source by far (3/4ths), but New Delhi now buys more from NATO members (US, France in lead).

However much Russia’s total has dropped to, it still remains above China’s fourth-place share of six percent. Interestingly enough, China’s biggest arms buyers are India’s arch-rival Pakistan (#1) and former fellow British colony Bangladesh (the old East Pakistan) at #2. Thailand, ruled by its military, is #3.

India has no appreciable arms transfers (far less than 1% of the world total).

Global arms transfers (imports)