Historically, the Cold War and its aftermath have been pivotal events in international politics. Fascinated by this period, I delved into post-Cold War theses from renowned scholars like John Mearsheimer, Barry Buzan, Fareed Zakaria, and Robert Kagan. Their analyses and projections about the post-Cold War world can be summarized into four main aspects:
1. End of Bipolarity and Emergence of Unipolarity
The Iron Curtain that divided the world into East-West blocks has fallen. The collapse of the USSR ended the bipolar rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, giving rise to unipolarity with the United States as the sole superpower. The post-Cold War world has seen unprecedented power and influence by the United States across political, economic, military, and cultural spheres.
Unipolarity is a significant transformation of the international political landscape. Its significance illustrates the derivative change and attributes in international politics and power configurations, as detailed in the points below.
2. The Rise of the Rest
Fareed Zakaria’s term “rise of the rest” aptly describes the post-Cold War era. While major powers continued to dominate international politics, middle and minor powers increasingly influenced global affairs. Non-state actors have played increasingly prominent roles in shaping global governance and facilitating cooperation among nations. This could be simplified by referring to it as multilateralism and globalization.
3. Shifts in Geopolitical Alliances and Regional Dynamics
Despite the end of the East-West divide, regional dynamics remained complex. John Mearsheimer highlighted the realignment of alliances, especially in Europe, where NATO expanded eastward. Another regional powers would exercise their power and creating security dillema. Regions such East Europe, East Asia and Middle East perhaps one step away from interstate war.
4. Proliferation of Conflicts and Humanitarian Crises
While interstate wars declined, intrastate conflicts and humanitarian crises surged due to power vacuums, ethnic tensions, and ultranationalism. The international community often struggled to respond effectively to these non-traditional security threats.
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Understanding these aspects underscores why analyzing military expenditure matters. Military spending data provides insights into the behavior of the states and contemporary geopolitics, making it a crucial variable for high-politics analysis. Moreover, it’s undeniable that these matters influence our lives in a cosmopolitan world. Whether you’re an international politics scholar, diplomat, policymaker, high-level public official, or a member of civil society, you might need to delve deeper into it. Understanding how the world works is an individual responsibility, crucial for navigating our lives and shaping the global agenda.
Here’s the topic: How are countries behaving in the post-Cold War era? The best way to examine this is by analyzing their military expenditure data, a significant variable for understanding state behavior and contemporary geopolitics.
I used the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, which provides annual defense budget data from 1949 to 2023. (Tip: For personal research, choose a topic you’re passionate about and a clean dataset to make your work easier).
In this essay, I dedicated a weekend to research and visualize this project. It’s not fancy, but it’s worthwhile for improving my data visualization skills with Tableau. Let’s roll!
Data Preparation
It didn't take me long to figure out what to do with the dataset. The data collection process was straightforward, as the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database is easily accessible and free. The dataset, along with its documentation and notes, is easy to understand.
For each country, the SIPRI dataset lists the values entered within a selected timeframe. Although it's a time-series dataset, it's not based solely on dates. It's sufficient for the analysis, so I didn't convert it into a date data type.
I selected the timeframe from 1991 to 2023. This required some data cleaning to handle unnecessary data, missing values, and to drop rows or columns, etc. Data transformation was also needed because the dataset wasn't in table format.
Data Analysis & Findings
My key questions included: How much has the world spent on military budgets from 1991 to 2023? What were the trends? Which countries spent the most? How did military expenditure as a percentage of government spending vary across countries?
From 1991 to 2023, global military spending rose from $1.28B to $2.39B, an 86.7% increase. All regions saw double-digit growth. The top four subregions were North Africa (637.5%), East Asia (368.3%), South Asia (279%), and Eastern Europe (247.1%).
In 2023, the US led in military spending with $880.1B, followed by China at $309.5B and Russia at $126.5B.
To provide more insights into the distribution and disparities of approaches in global military expenditure over the past three decades, I classified countries based on their average military expenditure as a percentage of government spending from 1991 to 2023:
- Low Expenditure: ≤ 5%
- Medium Expenditure: 5% - 10%
- High Expenditure: > 10%
The classification revealed 44 countries with high military expenditure, 56 with medium, and 62 with low expenditure. This approach highlights how different countries prioritize military spending.
The results provide valuable context on the issue and insights into the distribution of military expenditure as a percentage of government spending across countries. My assumption is that countries with high expenditure are often traditional major powers, caught in security dilemmas, located in current geopolitical hotspots, regional powers, and undemocratic. In contrast, countries with medium to low expenditure, often located in stable regions, benefiting from major power nuclear deterrence (nuclear umbrella), democratic, and supportive of advancing a world peace agenda, show a lower commitment to interstate conflict.
However, please note that this classification is arbitrary and may not capture all nuances or complexities in each country's defense policy and spending priorities. Further research and analysis could explore additional factors influencing military expenditure decisions and their implications.
How I Visualized Post-Cold War World’s Military Expenditure Data
The visualization provides three use cases: it presents an overview of Global Military Expenditure per Country (1991-2023) and Military Expenditure as a Percentage of Government Spending (1991-2023) using Tableau Public's mapping feature. Due to the data structure, I couldn't find a way to apply a table join in Tableau Public. Therefore, I had to build a separate dashboard for each, like the map and the comparison graph below.
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| Global Military Expenditure per Country (1991-2023) |
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| Military Expenditure as a Percentage of Government Spending (1991-2023) |
The Selected Regions and Subregions
The third dashboard provides a historical and comparative perspective. I used line and bar charts to show the evolution of military expenditure over decades. The data, sorted chronologically from oldest to latest, clearly shows that global military expenditure has been growing.
Comparisons at regional and subregional levels reveal nuanced patterns and shed light on geopolitical upheavals. I selected four regions (Americas, Africa, Asia & Oceania, and Europe) and three subregions (East Asia, Middle East, and Eastern Europe) to observe the trends. It appears that the world’s current geopolitical hotspots have experienced long-term increases in military expenditure.
All dashboards were automatically color-coded. I chose a sequential red color for highly ranked indices and applied it to all charts. I also color-coded the subtitles to help readers recognize the selected variables. Tableau Public also provides interactive tooltips to display detailed data for each box.
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| A Tale of the World after Cold War | Tableau Public |
Final Thoughts
I couldn't be happier that you enjoyed reading this and found a beacon of insight on the topic. I hope you discovered something useful and feel inspired to start your own research and data analysis. Learning about how the world works, on any level, is a quest for understanding, empathy, and informed decision-making in an ever-changing world.
The comparative perspectives provided should spark questions for authorities to justify their military spending. Reach out to them to ask where your money goes and how it can achieve a greater good. This question is vital, despite the nuances in discussions around geopolitical alliances, economic disparities, and foreign policy imperatives.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this issue. What are your critiques of my analysis and data visualization? What insights might I have missed? Are there other use cases for these findings?
Lastly, regarding potential use cases for this research, how could one apply advanced statistics and machine learning models for forecasting projections, trends, etc.? For those trained in these techniques (because I’m not), this research could provide a solid foundation for further exploration.
Thank you for reading, and I look forward to your feedback!