SIPRI 2024 Report: Arms Sales Hit Record $679 B, Europe Surges as China Contracts

Surges in armaments revenue tend to precede or accompany systemic power shifts: in 1938, global military outlays spiked 15 % as European states scrambled on the eve of World War II, and the early-1980s Reagan-era build-up added roughly 7 % of U.S. GDP to defense each year. The 2024 numbers echo those inflection points, suggesting the post-Cold-War ‘peace dividend’ (1990-1998) has decisively reversed. Two structural forces are visible: (1) a re-militarising Europe re-engineering its industrial base after decades of consolidation; (2) a fragmenting supply chain regime, with sanctions, mineral controls and corruption probes reshuffling who can actually deliver complex systems. China’s dip—driven not by demand but by an anti-graft purge—signals how governance shocks can stall a rising power’s military modernization even amid growing tensions over Taiwan. Over a 100-year horizon, whether this moment becomes 1913-style escalation or 1954-style deterrence race will hinge less on topline revenue than on states’ ability to translate spending into deployable capability and on political mechanisms to cap spirals. SIPRI’s dataset, while authoritative, relies on company self-reporting and omits many classified sales, so the real curve could be steeper—underscoring how opaque the new ‘age of rearmament’ already is.