As nuclear nations commit to renewing and sometimes expanding their arsenals, a decline in the number of weapons seen since the early 1990s seems to have stalled, with some signs of a numerical increase, researchers said yesterday.
“The reduction of nuclear arsenals that we have gotten used to since the end of the Cold War appears to be leveling out,” said Hans Kristensen, associate senior fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s Nuclear Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-proliferation Programme.
The number of nuclear weapons among the nine nuclear-armed states — the US, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — totaled 13,080 at the start of this year, a slight decrease from 13,400 a year earlier, the institute estimated.
However, that included retired warheads waiting to be dismantled and without them the combined military stockpile of nuclear arms rose from 9,380 to 9,620.
Meanwhile, the number of nuclear weapons deployed with operational forces increased from 3,720 to 3,825, the report said.
Of these, about 2,000 were “kept in a state of high operational alert,” meaning for launch in a matter of minutes.
“We’re seeing very significant nuclear modernization programs all around the world and in all the nuclear weapons states,” Kristensen said.
Nuclear states also seem to be raising “the importance they attribute to the nuclear weapons in their military strategies,” he said.
This change can be observed in both Russia and the US, which together possess more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, Kristensen said, adding that it was too early to say if the administration of US President Joe Biden would deviate from the strategy of former US president Donald Trump.
“I think that the Biden administration is signaling quite clearly that it is going to continue the overwhelming main thrust of the nuclear modernization program that was underway during the Trump years,” he said.
In August, the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty — most nations — are set to meet in New York for a review held every five years.
Under the treaty nuclear powers commit to “pursue negotiations in good faith” both on the “cessation of the nuclear arms race” and “nuclear disarmament,” but as many are renewing their arsenals, other parties might question their commitment.
“The member states of that treaty will rightly be able to ask: ‘Are you truly in compliance with this treaty? If you’re not, why should we continue to be members to the treaty?’” Kristensen said.
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