YEREVAN (News.am) — Armenia is the world’s third most militarized country, according to the 2019 edition of the Global Militarization Index (GMI) by the German-based Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC).
Armenia is behind Israel and Singapore only, and tops the list of most heavily militarized countries in Europe.
The ten countries with the highest levels of militarization in 2018 are Israel, Singapore, Armenia, Cyprus, South Korea, Russia, Greece, Jordan, Belarus and Azerbaijan. These countries allocate particularly high levels of resources to the military in comparison to other areas of society, the report shows.
“Both Baku and Yerevan are currently modernizing the old army and air force weapons systems, for which they have awarded various large-scale contracts to Russian weapons manufacturers. The result is rising military spending on both sides,” the authors say.
Azerbaijan’s is tenth in the list, while Armenia’s other neighbors – Georgia and Turkey – are the 49th and 20th, respectively.
The Global Militarization Index depicts the relative weight and importance of the military apparatus of one state in relation to its society as a whole. For this, the GMI records a number of indicators, such as comparison of military expenditures with its GDP, the contrast between the total number of military forces and the overall population, the ratio of the number of heavy weapons systems available and the number of the overall population.
