Azerbaijan along with Israel, Syria and Saudi Arabia among top ten
militarized nations in the world: Global Militarization Index
arminfo
Thursday, November 15, 13:15
Azerbaijan along with Israel, Syria and Saudi Arabia is among top ten
countries in the list of the world’s most militarized nations,
according to the latest Global Militarization Index released Tuesday
by the Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC).
Singapore ranks second, followed by Syria, Russia, Jordan, and Cyprus,
according to the Index, which is based on a number of weighted
variables, such as the comparison of a country’s military budget with
its gross domestic product (GDP), and the percentage of the GDP it
spends on health care.
Six of the top 10 states, including Israel (1), Syria (4), Jordan (5),
Kuwait (7), Bahrain (9), and Saudi Arabia (10) are located in the
Middle East, while yet another of Iran’s neighbors, Azerbaijan, made
its first entry into the militarized elite at number 8.
Created in 1996, the GMI, which has been updated each year, tries to
assess the balance between militarisation and human development,
particularly related to health. In addition to BICC’s own research,
data published by the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Health Organisation
(WHO), and the Institute for Strategic Studies are used to compile the
Index, whose rankings go back to 1990 at the end of the Cold War. In
addition to the comparison of military budgets, GDP, and health
expenditures, the Index uses several other variables, including the
total personnel in the paramilitary and military forces – albeit not
the police – and total number of physicians vis-a-vis the overall
population, and the ratio of the number of heavy weapons to the total
population.
Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Artur Rasizade said that Azerbaijan had
increased its military expenditures 89% over the last year. Earlier,
he said that over the last 8 years Azerbaijan’s military budget grew
20fold. In Azerbaijan, military spending increased by 39.74 million
manats to 1.36 billion manats (about 1.73 billion U.S. dollars) in
2011. It is also reported that for 2012 Azerbaijan’s military spending
account for 15 percent of its overall annual budget, increasing to
1.38 billion manats (about 1.77 billion U.S. dollars).