With the rapid and universal spread of the deadly coronavirus challenging the fundamental assumptions and development models of the societies we live in, there sure will be policy resets and political costs to pay after the pandemic ebbs. Even the US that spends top dollar on healthcare was grossly underprepared when the invisible virus began its invasion. Here are data points on the military and health budgets of nuclear powers and other big hitters in the arms market, to figure out if better, focused spending on health infrastructure could have eased the situation a tad.
The world is now fighting a different kind of protracted war. Military experts predict that budget priorities for governments will be more about the coronavirus response and health systems, while their overall spending capacity gets hammered by the economic devastation caused by the outbreak. “It is too early to discern what the full impact of this pandemic will be for defence ministries. That it will have an impact, and a significant one, however, now seems beyond doubt,” wrote Douglas Barrie, Nick Childs and Fenella McGerty in a blogpost for the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Economists at Rand, the US policy research institute, said it appears that cuts are coming, as the US government’s “ability to purchase defense items is likely to fall.”
Sources: Data on miliary sales in 2018 from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri). Defence expenditure data is from Sipri. Numbers on public health expenditure (state and central government) are from OECD, with asterisks for figures that include private spending. All numbers from 2018 or the latest available.
