THE WORLD NEWSREEL
HW1 — THE FIRST HYBRID WAR
THE FINANCIAL HISTORY OF THE CAMPAIGNS
The Military Expenditure Ledger, 2022–2026
Historical Atlas of HW1 — Economic and Strategic Supplement
AN ANALYSIS FROM: THE CRITICAL LEGAL ENUIRY - CARDOZO INSTITUTE
The First Hybrid War was fought not only by armies, aircraft and warships, but also through government budgets, industrial production, international credit and the mobilisation of national economies.
Its financial history reveals an important distinction: the money spent maintaining military power was considerably greater than the money directly attributable to individual campaigns.
For this reason, the following account separates total military expenditure, campaign-related assistance and sovereign indebtedness.
I. The Military Expenditure Ledger
The latest internationally comparable annual figures cover the period through December 2025. Expenditure during 2026 remains provisional and is therefore excluded from the consolidated totals.
All amounts are expressed in billions of US dollars.
| Power or alliance | 2025 expenditure | Consolidated historical figure |
|---|---|---|
| NATO — all members | $1,581 bn | $5,660 bn, 2022–2025 |
| United States | $954 bn | $3,744 bn, approximate 2022–2025 total |
| Russia | $190 bn | $448 bn, 2023–2025; 2022 excluded |
| European NATO members | $559 bn | Separate cumulative total not established |
| European Union | — | Separate EU-27 series required |
| Israel | $48.3 bn | Four-year total not established |
| Iran | $7.4 bn | Four-year total not established |
| Ukraine | $84.1 bn | Four-year total not established |
The NATO total is the sum of reported annual alliance expenditure: $1,232 billion in 2022, $1,341 billion in 2023, $1,506 billion in 2024 and $1,581 billion in 2025.
These annual totals reflect changes in NATO membership, including Finland's accession in 2023 and Sweden's in 2024.
The American figure is an approximate sum of annual spending, while Russia's three-year figure deliberately excludes 2022 rather than introducing an insufficiently reconciled estimate.
These are historical expenditure totals, not estimates of the direct cost of HW1. The 2022 totals also include January and most of February, before the opening of the Eastern Campaign.
II. The Balance of Military Expenditure
In 2025, NATO members collectively spent approximately 8.3 times as much on their armed forces as Russia.
The United States alone spent approximately five times as much.
Yet military expenditure cannot be translated mechanically into battlefield superiority.
Personnel costs, procurement prices, exchange rates, industrial structures, geographical commitments and purchasing power differ substantially between countries.
Furthermore, American military expenditure supports global operations, including commitments outside the European and Middle Eastern theatres.
The financial imbalance therefore describes the scale of available military resources, not the outcome of any particular campaign.
III. The Eastern Campaign: The Cost of Supporting Ukraine
Military assistance to Ukraine constitutes one of the most identifiable financial components of HW1.
The European Union, its member states and the United States have supplied weapons, ammunition, training, financial assistance and support for the Ukrainian state.
Two distinct accounting methods must be preserved.
The first records military assistance allocated to Ukraine.
The second records national government appropriations, including procurement, replacement of donated equipment, military operations and other related expenditure.
These figures cannot simply be added together.
For the United States, supplemental appropriations to the Department of Defense for Ukraine-related support reached approximately $127 billion during 2022–2025.
Of this amount, approximately $65.1 billion had been disbursed by the end of 2025.
The difference between appropriation and disbursement is essential: money authorised by a legislature is not necessarily money already spent.
European assistance must likewise be distinguished between commitments, allocations and actual disbursements.
IV. The Ukrainian Sovereign Debt
Ukraine's state and state-guaranteed debt, 31 August 2026: $215.55 billion.
| Component | USD billions |
|---|---|
| External public debt | 164.80 |
| Domestic public debt | 44.97 |
| State-guaranteed debt | 5.79 |
| Total | 215.55 |
The figures are rounded.
External public debt represented approximately 76.5% of the total.
A substantial proportion of Ukraine's obligations consisted of concessional financing, carrying terms more favourable than ordinary commercial borrowing.
The debt total must not be mistaken for the cost of the war.
It includes obligations incurred before February 2022, as well as financing associated with wartime expenditure and the continued operation of the Ukrainian state.
Nor should military grants be counted as additions to sovereign debt.
A grant transfers resources without creating a repayment obligation. A loan creates a liability, although its economic burden depends upon interest rates, maturity, grace periods and possible restructuring.
V. The Persian and Levantine Campaigns
The financial history of the Persian and Levantine theatres requires a different accounting approach.
Israel's national military expenditure reached $48.3 billion in 2025, while Iran's estimated expenditure was $7.4 billion.
These figures describe annual military spending, not the cumulative operational costs of the campaigns.
An adequate campaign account would separately identify expenditure on aircraft operations, precision-guided weapons, missile launches, air defence, mobilisation, equipment replacement and the protection of maritime communications.
It would also distinguish expenditure by Israel and Iran from the costs incurred by American forces operating in the region.
The published national military budgets cannot, by themselves, supply this operational account.
VI. The European Rearmament
The financial consequences of HW1 extended beyond direct military assistance.
Germany expanded defence expenditure and forward deployments.
Poland accelerated procurement and the expansion of its armed forces.
France maintained overseas and European commitments while increasing defence investment.
Italy strengthened its participation in NATO's eastern deployments and expanded military spending.
Finland and Sweden entered NATO, changing the military geography of northern Europe.
The enlargement of the Alliance and the reinforcement of its eastern flank involved expenditure on equipment, infrastructure, readiness, logistics and military exercises.
Such expenditure belongs to the wider strategic history of HW1, even where the forces concerned did not participate in combat.
VII. The Problem of Double Counting
A financial history of HW1 must avoid three common errors.
First, NATO expenditure cannot be added to American expenditure, because the American total is already included in NATO's accounts.
Second, European Union expenditure cannot be added indiscriminately to NATO expenditure, because most EU member states also belong to NATO.
Third, military assistance supplied by one state and received by another must not automatically be counted twice as an additional resource consumed by the international system.
The appropriate method is to maintain separate accounts for military spending, international transfers, direct campaign costs and public debt.
Only after these categories have been reconciled can a meaningful consolidated estimate be attempted.
VIII. The Historical Balance Sheet
The financial record already establishes the enormous scale of military mobilisation.
Between 2022 and 2025, the annual expenditure totals of NATO members amounted to approximately $5.66 trillion.
In 2025 alone, the United States spent $954 billion, Russia approximately $190 billion, Israel $48.3 billion and Iran an estimated $7.4 billion.
By August 2026, Ukraine's public and state-guaranteed debt had reached $215.55 billion.
But none of these figures, individually or collectively, measures the total economic cost of HW1.
That larger account would require estimates of destroyed infrastructure, lost production, displaced populations, disrupted trade, reconstruction liabilities and the long-term costs of military mobilisation.
The historical significance of the expenditure ledger lies precisely in this distinction.
The cost of maintaining the armed forces, the cost of conducting the campaigns and the economic cost of the international confrontation are three different quantities.
A serious history of HW1 must calculate all three.
The World Newsreel — Historical Atlas of HW1
Financial record compiled from SIPRI military expenditure series and official Ukrainian debt statistics. Annual military spending is distinguished from campaign expenditure, assistance commitments and sovereign liabilities.
Know today the truths of tomorrow.
The principal statistical references are SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, SIPRI 2025 expenditure report and the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance debt statement.
The $5.66 trillion NATO total is calculated, but the remaining four-year national totals should not be presented as final until the 2022–2025 figures have been reconciled against one consistent SIPRI database vintage. The same applies to the EU-27 total. This is a substantive limitation of the current ledger, rather than a zero-expenditure entry.
