The world’s nuclear-armed nations are set to boost their arsenals in the next decade, even as the number of such weapons fell last year, a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said.
“All of the nuclear-armed states are increasing or upgrading their arsenals, and most are sharpening nuclear rhetoric,” SIPRI Weapons of Mass Destruction Program director Wilfred Wan said in a statement yesterday.
That development could reverse a decades-long trend of reduced nuclear stockpiles.
Photo: AFP / Russian Ministry of Defense
By the start of this year, the global inventory of warheads had declined to 12,705, from more than 34,000 at the beginning of this century, SIPRI said.
While the number of usable nukes has stabilized, total stockpiles continued shrinking last year, as Russia and the US dismantled long-retired warheads.
The risk of a nuclear conflict received renewed attention after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, with Western intelligence officials saying that the Kremlin might turn to tactical or other limited nuclear weapons if its war in Ukraine continues to struggle.
Russia-US stability talks have stalled because of the war in Ukraine, and none of the other nuclear-armed states are pursuing arms control talks, SIPRI said.
The number of warheads in the usable military stockpiles of Russia and the US — which together have more than 90 percent of all nuclear weapons — remained relatively stable last year.
China, with the third-biggest arsenal, is in the middle of a “substantial expansion” of its nuclear weapon arsenal, including adding 300 new missile silos, it added.
“Although there were some significant gains in both nuclear arms control and nuclear disarmament in the past year, the risk of nuclear weapons being used seems higher now than at any time since the height of the Cold War,” SIPRI director Dan Smith said.
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