Armenia is among ten countries that have the highest levels of militarization for 2017, the Global Militarization Index (GMI) released by the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC) shows.

The ten countries that have the highest levels of militarization for the year 2017 are Israel, Singapore, Armenia, Cyprus, South Korea, Russia, Greece, Jordan, Brunei and Belarus.  These countries allocate particularly high levels of resources to the military in comparison to other areas of society, the report says.

Armenia is also the most militarized country in Europe.

“Despite a ceasefire having been negotiated following the bloody escalation of violence in April 2016, there have been exchanges of fire and one Azerbaijani drone attack in the Caucasus region of Nagorno-Karabakh in the past two years. As a result of the ongoing tension in this area, Armenia (position 3) and Azerbaijan (position 12) continued to invest an excessive amount of resources in their armed forces,” the report says.

Among other neighbors, Georgia is 52nd, Turkey is 20th and Iran is 22nd.

Compiled by BICC, the Global Militarization Index (GMI) presents on an annual basis the relative weight and importance of a country's military apparatus in relation to its society as a whole. The GMI 2018 covers 155 countries and is based on the latest available figures (in most cases data for 2017). The index project is financially supported by Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.