Nuclear-armed nations hiked spending on atomic weapons arsenals by one-third in the past five years as they modernized their stockpiles amid growing geopolitical tensions, two reports showed yesterday.
The world’s nine nuclear-armed states jointly spent US$91 billion on their arsenals last year, according to a new report from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
That report, and a separate one from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), indicated that nuclear weapons states are dramatically scaling up spending as they modernize and even deploy new nuclear-armed weapons.
Photo: Staff Sergeant J.T. Armstrong / US Air Force via AP
“I think it is fair to say there is a nuclear arms race under way,” ICAN executive director Melissa Parke said.
Wilfred Wan, head of SIPRI’s weapons of mass destruction program, warned in a statement that “we have not seen nuclear weapons playing such a prominent role in international relations since the Cold War.”
SIPRI’s report showed that the total estimated number of nuclear warheads in the world actually declined to 12,121 at the start of this year, from 12,512 a year earlier, but while some of that included older warheads scheduled to be dismantled, it said 9,585 were in stockpiles for potential use — nine more than a year earlier — while 2,100 were kept in a state of “high operational alert” on ballistic missiles.
Nearly all of those were held by the US and Russia, but China was for the first time believed to also have some warheads on high operational alert, SIPRI said.
“While the global total of nuclear warheads continues to fall as Cold War-era weapons are gradually dismantled, regrettably we continue to see year-on-year increases in the number of operational nuclear warheads,” SIPRI director Dan Smith said.
The spending surge reported by ICAN appeared to back that up.
The report showed that last year alone, nuclear weapons spending worldwide jumped by US$10.8 billion from a year earlier, with the US accounting for 80 percent of that increase.
The US share of total spending, US$51.5 billion, “is more than all the other nuclear-armed countries put together,” ICAN said.
The next biggest spender was China, at US$11.8 billion, followed by Russia, spending US$8.3 billion.
The UK’s spending rose significantly for the second consecutive year, swelling 17 percent to US$8.1 billion.
Spending last year by nuclear-armed states — which also include France, India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea — jumped more than 33 percent from the US$68.2 billion spent in 2018, when ICAN first began collecting, it said.
Since then, nuclear-armed states have spent an estimated US$387 billion on the deadly weapons, the report showed.
Parke slammed “the billions of dollars being squandered on nuclear weapons” as “a profound and unacceptable misallocation of public funds.”
She highlighted that that money was more than what the World Food Programme estimates is needed to end world hunger.
“And you could plant a million trees for every minute of nuclear weapons spending,” she said.
“These numbers are obscene, and it is money that the state says is going towards weapons that... will never be used,” she said, pointing to the nuclear deterrence doctrine.
The investments are not only wasteful, but also extremely dangerous, she added.
Geneva, Switzerland-based ICAN won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its key role in drafting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which took effect in 2021.
Seventy nations have ratified it to date and more have signed it, although none of the nuclear-armed states have come on board.
“Instead of investing in Armageddon, the nine nuclear-armed states should follow the example of almost half the world’s countries and join the treaty ... and make a real contribution to global security,” said Alicia Sanders-Zakre, a coauthor of the ICAN report.
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