The world is rearming for a more dangerous age
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The peace dividend is over. After decades in which military budgets looked like yesterday’s problem, governments are again treating defence as a core economic priority. The IMF says conflicts have risen sharply over the past 15 years, while about half of countries increased military budgets between 2020 and 2024.
The striking detail is not just higher spending, but the speed of the reversal. By 2024, nearly 40% of countries were spending more than 2% of GDP on defence, up from 27% in 2018. SIPRI also found that global military expenditure hit $2.43 trillion in 2023, its steepest annual rise since 2009.
That creates a hard fiscal trade off. Rearmament may be necessary, but it competes with ageing populations, debt costs, climate adaptation and public services. The new geopolitical era is not just more dangerous. It is more expensive.
Source: IMF
Faith that governments can fund security without breaking budgets. Faith that consumers will keep spending despite job anxiety. Faith that public health wins will survive new products. Faith that Tesla’s future businesses will grow large enough to justify the present valuation.
But faith is not the same as evidence. The point of looking carefully at data is not to kill optimism. It is to separate hope from what is actually happening.
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