In response to the worsening security environment, cuts to European defence budgets are finally being reversed. In this Brief, defence spending data from 2015 are spliced by region and by category to show how the calculus is changing in defence ministries across Europe.

2015 saw Russia, Saudi Arabia and China invest heavily in their militaries, while Europeans have largely reversed long-standing defence budget cuts, too. Increases in defence spending have, however, had very different implications for the military activities of the respective regional powers.

This Brief seeks to improve the understanding of the relation between (cripplingly) expensive capabilities and complex security challenges. What are the true effects of cost escalation of weapon systems? And is European defence suffering as a result?

Back in 2012, when NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that "there is a price to pay for security, but the cost of insecurity can be much higher," there were few who fully grasped just how accurate his warning was. For many years, European defence budgets have largely been...