Most of us don’t have much of a grasp on the relationship between our government’s annual budget ($155 billion), the Gross Domestic Product (GDP: the sum total of all goods and services produced within a country in any given year = $433 billion) and the amount spent on preparing to fight a war ($5.8 billion). Most of us understand economics from the perspective of a weekly paycheck, rent, bills and rising costs of living expenses.
It is easy to see why defence spending often gets a pass from the public: most of us know little about the military and have little interaction with soldiers, and even less with actual wars and advanced weaponry. We are subjected to relentless state propaganda manufacturing heroic histories and daily stories of the achievements, both great and small, of the military. The basis for any standing army is the perception of an existential threat, a nationalist formula for compelling and legitimising almost any action with the public’s consent, including unquestioned and extravagant spending.
Breaking down spending into per capita amounts (ie. cost per person) helps us to see how much we are all paying for war. More than that, however, it helps us to understand the implications of dramatically increasing spending to the 2% of GDP goal by 2032. As a so-called ‘bi-partisan’ agreement between National and Labour, this goal takes on the appearance of reasonableness and inevitability. It is neither.
Current situation
- GDP $433 billion
- 2026 military spending: $5.8 billion (1.33% of GDP)
- 2026 population: 5,367,750
- Per person war spending per year: $1080
- Average household size is 2.7 residents
- Average annual household spending for war: $2917
- NZ’s war spending would be $11.6 billion
- Population will be 5,617,291 (approx)
- Per capita war spending per year: $2065
- Average annual household spending for war: $5575
That the NZ ‘establishment’ has agreed to this 2% goal is hardly surprising given membership in the military-intelligence alliance of the Five Eyes, NATO involvement, and ongoing, extreme US pressure for more spending.
However, the rise to 2% is itself unjustifiable, untenable and unnecessary. We made a clear case outlining examples of projects, infrastructure and care that we are sacrificing when the NZ government agrees to ramp up to $11 billion in annual war spending by 2032. Instead, we should be heading in the other direction: reducing military spending and redirecting these resources to urgent domestic crises: poverty, healthcare and environmental breakdown.
Let’s retire the 2% lie.
There is no body of evidence justifying the 2% minimum spending on war, yet it has been accepted as gospel truth about an appropriate war budget. It is essentially a number picked out of the air by the US and pushed onto NATO with no basis in reality or the specific strategic context of any nation-state.
While there has been an outright rejection of US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s recent suggestion that NZ was ‘freeloading’, much of the discussion around it was a de facto endorsement of the anticipated rise to 2% of GDP from the current 1.33%.
We can’t afford to continually prepare and train for US wars, if we want to care for the people and environment of Aotearoa NZ.
And it isn’t just the money.
It goes without saying that most of us can think of many, many things we could use $1000 for right now. With costs for food, power and transport skyrocketing, that amount of money would be a significant windfall especially for larger families.
For many of us, the issue isn’t solely, or even primarily, about the money we spend on war. It is the knowledge that we have become complicit in the horror being inflicted on the world with our tax dollars like when the NZDF is training alongside the US and Israel at RIMPAC, when we help make weapons dealer Lockheed Martin bigger and stronger, when the NZDF buy weapons from Israeli arms companies like Elbit and Roboteam, and when the NZ Navy deploy to uphold ‘freedom of navigation’ while our political leaders refuse to condemn Israel’s decades long naval blockade of Gaza and the US’s maritime assassinations in the Caribbean.
While cross-party political assurances exist for a steady rise in war spending irrespective of the election, no other public service has any certainty at all, save for the knowledge that next year will almost certainly have less money and fewer resources than this one.
If we want to end NZ’s role in war and empire making; if we want healthcare, a liveable environment and opportunities for our children’s future, it is imperative that we understand this escalating war spending, and that we act to stop it now.