Terrorism has both temporal and spatial dimensions. In response to terrorist incidents, a country may increase its military expenditure. This increment in military expenditure has spatial differences. Besides, the income (GDP) of a country has been found to be somewhat related to the terrorist incidents within a country. In this background, this research explores the spatial dimension of the interrelation between terrorist incidents, military expenditure, and income of the countries. Using secondary data sources from different sources, and considering 86 countries, this study investigates the latest condition of spatiality by testing two hypotheses – (1) a high number of terrorist incidents leads to military expenditure, but not for the high-income countries, and (2) the countries with high number of terrorist incidents and high military expenditure (both in comparison to each other), are regionally in the safe haven for terrorists, as proposed by the USA. The findings suggest that both the hypotheses are correct, but refine the hypotheses by additional observations. Whereas the low-income African countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, and Togo have high military expenditure as percentage of their GDP in response to high number of incidents of terrorism, the Latin American country Colombia, and the South Asian Countries Myanmar and Pakistan are in the same foot, albeit they belong to higher income-groups. The countries in the Middle East and Egypt, although considered to be safe haven for terrorist organizations and having a high number of terrorist incidents, have rather comparatively lower military expenditure as percentage of their GDP, in comparison to other countries.
Article DOI: 10.62823/IJARCMSS/8.2(I).7532