From Ukraine to Gaza, from the Sahel to the South China Sea, armed conflict and geopolitical fights are reshaping global priorities. Governments are pouring unprecedented sums into defense budgets, driven by wars, rivalries among major powers and spreading insecurity in and across borders.
Many European countries were clear in 2025 that their priority was building stronger military power, and to achieve that, money for development was redirected in line with the new goals. Before these pronouncements, global military spending had reached record highs even as climate change has accelerated, hunger deepens and political instability drives mass displacement.
In an interview with PassBlue, Adedeji Ebo, the director and deputy to the High Representative of Disarmament at the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), argues that while military spending may be necessary in some aspects, it does not guarantee real security. Ebo discusses geopolitical tensions, regional differences in conflict, the role of transparency and civil society and what UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s new report called “The Security We Need: Rebalancing Military Spending for a Sustainable and Peaceful Future” could mean, in practice, particularly for Africa because of its high concentration of conflicts involving light weapons and threats of nonstate armed groups.
The interview, done in late October and updated on Jan. 17, 2026, has been edited for clarity and condensed for brevity, with excerpts below. — DAMILOLA BANJO
PassBlue: Why has military spending been rising consistently in the last decade?
Ebo: The reasons vary by context, but broadly speaking, they are driven by geopolitical tensions and a growing deficit of trust among countries. Military spending figures are often a numerical reflection of those anxieties. We see this clearly in Europe after Russia’s war in Ukraine, which led many European countries to increase their military spending levels, partly out of fear that what happened to Ukraine could happen to them. There have also been shifts within NATO, with the United States urging its European allies that are part of NATO to take greater responsibility for their own defense.
Beyond Europe, there are global tensions that feed political anxiety. Military spending figures are often a numerical reflection of those anxieties. In regions like Africa, however, the drivers are different. There, military spending often responds to insecurity caused by unofficial armed groups, such as extremist organizations in the Sahel, Lake Chad Basin and, increasingly, in coastal West Africa. These threats are real and immediate, but they are largely different in nature from interstate wars.
PassBlue: Most conflicts are concentrated in regions like Africa and parts of Asia, while most military spending happens in the global North. How do you explain that?
Ebo: It largely comes down to the nature of the conflicts and differences in economic capacities. Wars like the one in Ukraine involve extremely expensive weaponry: missiles, tanks, heavy artillery. In contrast, most conflicts in Africa rely on small arms and light weapons. These are devastating, but comparatively inexpensive. Some have described them as poor man’s wars, whereas conflicts involving advanced weapon systems are rich man’s wars.
In Europe, much of the spending is also about deterrence, arming to prevent war rather than to fight one. In Africa, the conflicts are often already underway, but they are fought with cheaper means. Additional factors that could shape these dynamics include geopolitical rivalries, technological competition and defense-industrial incentives, all of which tend to drive higher military expenditures in wealthier states.
PassBlue: Guterres’s military spending report calls on rich countries to reduce military spending and invest more in development. But what incentive could persuade countries to do that, especially when they feel directly threatened?
Ebo: The incentive lies in how security is defined. If security is understood narrowly as military strength, then increased military spending seems logical. But if security is understood properly, as multidimensional, extending beyond military assets and deterrence to include cooperation and sustainability, that logic begins to break down.
Take migration, for example: Many of the pressures are often framed as a security threat in Europe. But those pressures originate in underdevelopment, conflict and climate stress elsewhere. Addressing those root causes through development, education and climate action directly contributes to Europe’s own security.
The same applies to climate change. Flooding, heat waves and environmental degradation do not respect borders. Investing in global climate resilience reduces insecurity everywhere.
The answer as outlined in the secretary-general’s report — therefore lies in reviving diplomacy and peaceful dispute resolution; strengthening the disarmament agenda and linking it to the post-2030 development framework; promoting transparency and confidence-building; increasing investment in development financing; and reframing security through a human-centered lens.
PassBlue: Critics might say the argument for rechanneling military spending feels abstract when countries are facing active wars. How do you respond?
Ebo: This is not a binary choice. No one is arguing that states should abandon their responsibility to defend themselves. The report of the secretary-general on military spending recognizes that military expenditure may be necessary, but it is not sufficient. Security is a process. Military threats can blind us to other, equally serious threats to human survival. Hunger, disease, climate disasters and pandemics affect everyone, regardless of borders or wealth. Covid-19 was a powerful reminder of that shared vulnerability.
Ultimately, many military threats are self-created and reflections of divisions that humans themselves constructed. By contrast, threats like climate change and disease are planetary. Ignoring them while pouring resources into weapons is a dangerous imbalance.
The principles of disarmament are universal. What differs is the context. In Africa, many conflicts stem from weak or exclusionary social contracts. When people feel marginalized politically, economically or socially, they may take up arms. In some cases, communities arm themselves against the state or against one another. These are governance issues as much as security issues. In Europe today, insecurity is driven by geopolitical anxiety following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On the Korean peninsula, tensions are shaped by ideology, governance systems and nuclear weapons. These contexts are very different, but the underlying human motivations — fear, exclusion, insecurity — are the same.
PassBlue: Do current global disarmament frameworks reflect these different contexts?
Ebo: There are many frameworks, depending on the type of weapon. Some focus on the total elimination of nuclear weapons, others regulate conventional arms such as small arms, and there are efforts to address challenges to cyberspace and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. Some frameworks were created when today’s developing countries were still under colonial rule or newly independent, which meant that certain states played a larger role in helping to set the rules while others joined later.
In nuclear disarmament, for example, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) rests on three pillars: non-proliferation, disarmament and peaceful use. States engage with the different pillars in different ways, reflecting their interests and experiences.
It is important to note that disarmament treaties and frameworks — as well as their implementation — are not static. For example, in my recent briefing to the Security Council on the chemical weapons file in Syria, I welcomed the commitment expressed by the new Syrian government to fully and transparently cooperate with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to make progress towards eliminating the remnants of the chemical weapons program in Syria that was developed under the previous government. This illustrates how political will is often central to making headway in disarmament.
What worries me most today is the rapid evolution of emerging technology, especially lethal autonomous weapon systems. The notion of weapons making life-or-death decisions without meaningful human control and judgment raises profound ethical, legal and security concerns. The secretary-general has been clear that delegating decisions over the use of lethal force to weapons systems without human control is unacceptable.
PassBlue: What would carrying out the recommendations in the secretary-general’s military spending report mean for Africa?
Ebo: Ideally, the African Union should interpret the report through African realities and translate it into a guiding framework for member states. Key issues include the proliferation of weapons into Africa, the growing use of drones by extremist groups and weaknesses in military budgeting and oversight. African-led initiatives exist that speak to some of these priorities. The African Union’s Silencing the Guns initiative, along with regional frameworks, such as the ECOWAS Convention on Small Arms and the Nairobi Protocol in East Africa, demonstrate efforts to curb illicit weapon flows and promote responsible arms governance. Africa’s history means that militaries were often designed to protect the state, not the population, and that legacy still affects governance today.
Strengthening parliamentary oversight, building technical capacity and involving civil society are especially important to strengthening public trust and accountability in military budgeting. Legislators need to understand what they are approving, and citizens need a voice. The report should not remain a government document. Civil society must help bridge the gap between state institutions and communities.
The African Union’s Silencing the Guns initiative is a good example. There are also regional frameworks, such as the ECOWAS Convention on Small Arms and the Nairobi Protocol in East Africa. The challenge is implementation. Too much of this work remains elite-driven and disconnected from communities. If disarmament norms are not understood and owned at the grassroots, they remain declarations on paper.
My reading of the military spending report is that regions and countries must own it. If we focus only on narrow, territorial security, the planet has a way of reminding us — through floods, heat waves, pandemics — that our security is ultimately shared. We are wise to remember that peace is not built on arms races but on diplomacy and prevention, confidence-building, arms control, adherence to international law and calibrated defense.
Damilola Banjo is an award-winning staff reporter for PassBlue who has covered a wide range of topics, from Africa-centered stories to gender equality to UN peacekeeping and US-UN relations. She also oversees all video production for PassBlue. She was a Dag Hammarskjold fellow in 2023 and a Pulitzer Center postgraduate fellow in 2021. She was part of the BBC Africa team that produced the Emmy-nominated documentary, “Sex for Grades.” In addition, she worked for WFAE, an NPR affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. Banjo has a master’s of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an undergraduate degree from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.
Damilola that you for this great contribution! I would like to underline ONE single key factor in all what we are seeing in terms of increase in defense spending: the Weapon Industry in the West! When the US president has pressured and threatened NATO member countries to spend more money on weapons, he created the anxiety among them and invited them to come and buy the weapons in the US, this is a great financial opportunity for the American Weapon Industry. When Europe promised billions of Euros to Ukraine its guiding principle is that Ukraine will buy weapons from Europe, this is a great financial opportunity for the weapon industry in Europe. Who is sending weapons to Sudan so that Sudanese kan continue to kill one another: UAE so to feed its weapon industry! Why wars are ongoing in Israel it is because the country has one of the largest weapon industry collaborating with the US and it has this very cynical slogan: come and buy because our weapons are well tested on the field, of course tested on Palestinian, Syrian and Libanese lives. Every where conflicts are created, sustained for the economic and political gains of the unipolar Western world and its Weapon Industry and this is the real challenge: how to stop the Weapon Industry’ s influence on political systems in the West so that the world will see PEACE!