The world is becoming more dangerous than ever before. That’s the type of statement you may read in the newspaper or hear a presidential candidate say. But how do you prove that it is true? One trend that gives us a good indication is military spending.

In 2011, the world was spending massive amounts on its military. Although military expenditures have shrunk slightly each year it remains at a historic peak surpassing its height of the Cold War. The world is spending more than during the Cold War, or any other time, except for the height of World War ii.

The reason this indicates the danger in today’s world is not just as simple as saying, the more money spent on weapons, the more dangerous the world is. It matters who’s spending it. And when you look at those facts, the picture is even more disturbing.

Europe

Let’s start by looking at defense spending in Europe.

Last year, Russia increased its defense budget by 8 percent; this year, it has said it wants to increase its budget by 15 percent. This move by Russia has prompted some dramatic jumps in European military spending.

Lithuania is increasing its spending by 50 percent. Latvia is boosting its by 15 percent; Estonia, 7 percent. Ukraine is expected to double its military spending this year.

Further West, the increases, though not quite as extreme, are still pretty dramatic. Poland pledged to spend an extra $38 billion between 2013 and 2022. This year, France promised a $4.4 billion increase by 2019, Sweden an extra billion. Norway and the Netherlands both announced increases in the hundreds of millions.

The most important thing about these statistics is not the numbers themselves, but the direction of the trend. For years, Europe’s militaries have been shrinking. Now that has changed—spending is going back up again.

“These decisions present fundamental revisions of long-standing military spending practices in most of the countries that saw their defense budgets in more or less constant decline since the end of the Cold War,” wrote the Royal United Services Institute, a UK-based think tank. “The recent developments might therefore be regarded as being indicative of a substantial change in the countries’ defense discourse both at the political level and within the broader public debate.”

The most important example of this is Germany.

Last year, several news outlets, including the Trumpet, noted that some German leaders were talking about increasing the defense budget. Just the fact that people were talking this way was news—for years it has been all about cutting the budget.

At first, former Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg was one of the only high-profile people calling for an increase in military spending. “It is appalling that Germany recently decided to cut military spending by about €800 million (us$1.05 billion) in 2015,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal in September 2014.

Around this time last year, others started joining him. The New York Times wrote that the current defense minister Ursula von der Leyen was “pondering aloud the possible revision of what has long been a political no-go: raising the budget for defense spending.”

“Now I am being asked whether we should spend more money,” German defense expert Thomas Wiegold said. “That has never happened before.”

Now that extra spending has happened. In March, Germany announced an extra €8 billion ($9.1 billion) on its military. That’s an increase in spending of 6.2 percent. This went from unthinkable to hearing people talk about it, to actually happening—in around a year.

Now people are calling for even more. The outgoing Germany army chief of staff, for example, has called for an increase in spending of around $23 billion. The new parliamentary ombudsman for the armed forces, Hans-Peter Bartel has called for billions more to be spent.

Middle East

We see the same trend in the Middle East.

The main driver of this increase is Iran. In this year’s budget, Iran increased its defense spending by 30 percent, and the recently concluded nuclear deal could open the door to even bigger increases. The U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote:

The limits to Iran’s military expenditures have been a matter of necessity more than intent, and this necessity has resulted from international pressure and sanctions as the limits imposed by Iran’s gdp and its need to support a large native population. Iran has been subject to expanding and crippling sanctions, leading to a devalued currency, significant reductions in oil exports, trade disruptions, higher inflation, and a shrinking economy.

In other words, Iran wants to spend even more on its military, and the main thing holding it back has been the sanctions. Once those are gone, we’ll see that spending rise even more. The American Action Forum crunched some numbers and concluded that extra income made available to Iran by the deal would mean that its defense budget would increase $10 billion to $15 billion—though they also note, “Nothing in the deal would prevent Iran from spending more than that to fund their military or terrorist organizations and authoritarian regimes throughout the Middle East.”

This jump is having a big impact across the region, most dramatically in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s fourth-largest military spender. And its spending has exploded. Since 2005—just 10 years ago—its military expenditure has more than doubled. In 2014 it increased 17 percent, the largest increase in any of the world’s big spenders.

The Saudis are set to increase their defense budget by another 27 percent over the next five years, according to ihs Jane’s Aerospace, Defense and Security. The United Arab Emirates and Qatar are also planning to up their spending—Qatar quite substantially. Qatari officials announced $23 billion worth of potential deals last year, in what ihs Jane’s called “unprecedented increase in investment in the military.”

The Financial Times noted that these countries are all “seeking more advanced weaponry from the U.S. to counter what [they fear] could be an emboldened Iran.”

Over the summer the Pentagon disclosed that Saudi Arabia wants to spend $5.5 billion on an advanced patriot missile launcher. “If the sale happens, it’ll allow Saudi Arabia to make the skies above the Persian Gulf an exceedingly deadly place to be,” reported the military blog War Is Boring.

Saudi Arabia was forced to announce cuts to spending last month because of low oil prices. But even though defense spending is fully one third of its budget, it is not cutting that. Economic realities may still curb some of the Saudis’ ambitions, but they are placing a higher priority than ever on the military.

All of these figures refer only to conventional military spending; they do not include nuclear weapons. As nations throughout the region are well aware, the Iran deal will allow Iran to get a bomb. Tehran can break the deal and rush for one now, or stick to the deal and get one legally in just a few years. This raises the specter of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. The Saudis’ desire for a bomb of their own has been well documented. The Sunday Times wrote in May:

“We know this stuff is available to them off the shelf,” the [U.S.] intelligence official said. Asked whether the Saudis had decided to become a nuclear power, the official responded: “That has to be the assumption.”Prince Turki bin Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to London and Washington, declared bluntly last month: “Whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too.”

This trend is much harder to get concrete, reliable information on. The Saudis won’t be publishing regular updates on their progress toward a bomb. But in June they did sign an agreement with Russia for peaceful nuclear power.

Related to this region is Africa, with North Africa closely connected to events in the Middle East. Here, in 2014, military spending was up 6 percent—with Algeria and Angola leading that increase.

Asia

In Asia, military spending has gone through some major shifts in the past few decades. Since 2005, it has risen 62 percent. From 2013 to 2014, it rose 5 percent.

At the start of 2014, consulting firm McKinsey & Company published a report called “Southeast Asia: The Next Growth Opportunity in Defense.” It said:

[A] profound shift in economic power is reshaping the global landscape of defense spending. For the first time in more than two centuries—since the start of the Industrial Revolution—the majority of the world’s economic growth took place in the developing world, driven in large part by China, India and other emerging economies.Emerging markets are now spending more on defense than ever before. Countries such as China, Brazil and India have doubled or even tripled their defense spending during the past two decades. Southeast Asia—Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam—is now among the top defense spenders globally. These countries have collectively doubled their military spending between 1992 and 2012.

China is the world’s second-largest military spender. In 2014, it is estimated to have spent $216 billion on its military, an increase of about 10 percent over previous years.

There are a couple of different trends here. As the McKinsey report notes, this trend has been going back decades. But there is also the much more recent trend that comes from China and its island grabbing and island building in the South China Sea.

In May of this year, cnbc published an article called “Asia Defense Spending: New Arms Race in South China Sea.” It said, “The Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan are beefing up their military in the face of increasingly bold incursions in the region by China. But most of that spending is not going to weapons makers in the United States.”

The statistics back up cnbc’s claims.

Over the next year, Asia’s major powers are planning bigger defense increases. China is planning to increase its spending by 10 percent. India is planning an 11 percent jump. At the start of this year, Japan approved its largest ever defense budget, at around $42 billion—the third straight year of increase. ihs Jane’s forecasts that the Philippines will double its spending by 2021.

Why Now?

This is the picture we get of our world today. An Eastern European arms race. A Middle Eastern arms race. An Asian arms race.

But all this raises an important question: Why? Why now? Why is Saudi Arabia buying up arms out of fear of Iran at exactly the same time that Poland is buying up arms out of fear of Russia? At first glance, all these arms races are unconnected.

The answer to this question emerges as we consider the one major power not looked at so far: the United States.

Here is the big exception to the increased spending trend. In 2014, America cut its spending by 6.5 percent. From 2010 to 2014, America’s defense spending fell 20 percent. By the end of this year, it is expected to have fallen even further.

This is the common cause in the jump in arms spending everywhere else. America is retreating. Its allies don’t trust it. More aggressive nations around the world are becoming emboldened.

Take Europe. Russia has been acting aggressively for some time. In 2008 it invaded Georgia, but this invasion didn’t prompt the same explosion in defense spending from other nations. Eastern Europe was still scared, but instead of spending more, its nations turned to America for help. They asked America to station missiles on their territory. These permanent bases would help guarantee that America would come to their aid if they were attacked.

But America has backed away from those missile bases. It has consistently refused to stand up to Russia. Russia got the message that America won’t stop it. So it is spending more and becoming more aggressive. Europe got the message that it can’t depend on America. So after Russia invaded Ukraine, European nations are not trusting in America for help; they are looking to themselves.

It’s the same story in the Middle East. America has never done enough to prevent Iran from getting the bomb; but by signing the nuclear deal, it essentially made a public declaration that it would never stand up to Iran. Thus, Iran has become more aggressive, and Saudi Arabia and other states have concluded that they can’t trust America.

The story line is also true in Asia. The Chinese have watched how America dealt with Russia and with Iran and concluded that if they act aggressively, America won’t stand up to them. And the other Asian nations are concluding that they can’t rely on America.

These three global arms races and the instability they are bringing are all directly caused by America’s retreat from the world.

Historically, the rise of Britain and America led to a lengthy era of relative peace. That era, however, is coming to an end. To understand why, read our free book The United States and Britain in Prophecy by Herbert W. Armstrong.