Who Actually Pays for War: Military Burden 1970-2025

Who Actually Pays for War: Military Burden 1970-2025 America spends the most on war. It is not even close to paying the most. Every period from 1970 to 2025, ranked. 14 contenders, 56 data points. ── HOW THE DATA WAS TREATED ── The 14 contenders were chosen by hand, not by an automatic top-N: United States, Russia, China, Ukraine, Israel, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, France, Germany, India, Poland, Turkey, Iran, South Korea. Ranking the full source by peak value would fill the chart with one-off spikes in countries this video is not about. SIPRI publishes no series for the USSR, so Russia enters the data in 1992, China in 1989 and Ukraine in 1993. A race starting in 1949 would show the Cold War without the Soviet Union — that is a distortion, not an abbreviation. The race therefore starts in 1970: by the time those bars appear, the chart has been running for twenty years and the rules are clear. SIPRI counts published defence budgets. Actual spending by some governments is widely believed to be higher; that limitation is the source's, and it is stated here rather than hidden. ── WHERE THE DATA COMES FROM ── Source: SIPRI (via Our World in Data) — ourworldindata.org/grapher/military-expenditure-share-gdp Retrieved: 2026-08-12 Licence: CC BY 4.0 (Our World in Data) Unit: % of GDP The file was taken from the source as published and not hand-edited between download and render. ── WHY THIS RANGE ── The source goes wider than 1970 → 2025, but the earlier points cover too few entities to be a race rather than a single line. ── CHAPTERS ── 0:00 America spends the most on war. It is not even close to paying the most. 2:01 1983 · The Gulf takes the lead 3:34 1993 · Ukraine enters the data 6:50 2014 · Crimea redraws the map 8:04 2022 · War At the start (1970): Israel 23.4 % of GDP · Saudi Arabia 9.40 % of GDP · United States 8.03 % of GDP At the end (2025): Ukraine 39.6 % of GDP · Israel 7.81 % of GDP · Russia 7.50 % of GDP Got a topic you want raced? Drop it in the comments — the ones that get asked for most get made. ── MUSIC ── Music generated with ElevenLabs Sound Generation (seamless loops, cross-faded and normalised). Licensed for commercial use under a paid subscription; the provider does not guarantee the track is unique. (elevenlabs eleven_text_to_sound_v2, 105 BPM). Terms: elevenlabs.io/music-terms — tweekly.ru