Security as a global public good: Evaluation of Türkiye's defence spending as a NATO member

Security as a global public good has become increasingly primary element for the nation states and the international organisations as the increasing prevalence of armed conflicts around the world. Since economic interdependence increases the cost of wars for all parties, global security is necessary above all for the security of the economic order and international trade that dominates the international system. However, after the end of the Cold War, despite all the efforts of the EU to become a "soft power" at the supra-state level and the efforts of the USA to "promote democracy" at the state level, the level of armament worldwide is increasing rapidly, both at the level of states and illegally. The destructiveness of war has increased and the conflict building process has gained rapid with the developing weapons and communication technologies. In a security environment where threat elements are diversified and the speed of response to these threats should increase, the nation states are moving towards nationalization in all their policies, especially in security. This situation further reinforces the problem of the nation-states' unwillingness to renounce their sovereignty which is one of the main obstacles to the supplying and financing of security as a global public good. Although new threat elements such as cyber threats and tactical innovations such as the use of network-centered warfare techniques in the battlefield are mentioned, the basic elements of conventional warfare maintain their dominance. With the new weapon technologies, the cost of producing or purchasing large equipment such as tanks, warplanes, submarines, helicopters, missile defense systems and maintaining large armies is increasing day by day. Defense expenditures around the world continue to increase with the debate of necessity on the one hand and sacrificing social welfare on the other. Within the extent of this thesis, Turkey's defense expenditures as a NATO member are analysed together with selected NATO member countries. In addition, in order to verify the hypothesis, selected regional countries located in the near geography of Turkey and global examples were included in the analysis. The main question of the research is based on the reason for the high level of defense expenditures of the USA, which ranks first in the world-wide defense expenditures ranking and spends more on defense than the total defense expenditures of all NATO member countries. The aim of this thesis is to seek an answer to the question of whether the high defense expenditures of the USA are for the elimination of threats at the global level, in other words, for the establishment of security as a global public good or to protect the status of the USA as a global power. The answer to this question is important both for Turkey as a regional power and for its long-standing ally position in NATO, and for global security as the USA is an influential actor on a global scale. The question of the research fills a gap that has been ignored in defense studies in terms of empirically demonstrating that defense can correspond to a qualitative situation such as the need for not only security but also status, despite the natural result of quantitatively evaluating the size of armies in a world dominated by realistic security policies and balance of power. Within the scope of the thesis, the defense expenditure data of the selected countries for the period 1980-2020 were analyzed by beta convergence test, KPSS and AESTAR tests, and it was examined whether the defense expenditures of the selected countries converged with the defense expenditures of the USA. The result of the analysis is that the USA, which is a dominant country at NATO scale, determines the course of military expenditures at the global level, in other words, as the USA increases the level of its defense expenditures, the amount of defense expenditures of other countries both for the need and continuity of regional power and status and for sustaining their existence on a global scale. It rationally puts forward that they took their position according to this great power in their appointment. Keywords: Defence, Defence Expenditures, NATO, Defence Management, Global Public Goods, Kammler, Convergence