The overall number of nuclear warheads in the world has declined in the past year, but nations are modernizing their arsenals, a report published yesterday said.
At the start of this year, the US, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea had a total of about 13,865 nuclear weapons, according to estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
That represents a decrease of 600 nuclear weapons compared to the start of last year, but at the same time all nuclear weapon-possessing countries are modernizing these arms — and China, India and Pakistan are also increasing the size of their arsenals.
“The world is seeing fewer, but newer weapons,” SIPRI Nuclear Arms Control Programme director Shannon Kile, one of the report’s authors said.
The drop in recent years can mainly be attributed to the US and Russia, whose combined arsenals still make up more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.
This is in part due to the countries fulfilling their obligations under the New START — which puts a cap on the number of deployed warheads and was signed by the US and Russia in 2010 — as well as getting rid of obsolete warheads from the Cold War era.
The START expires in 2021, which Kile said was worrying since there are currently “no serious discussions underway about extending it.”
Next year the treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons — considered the cornerstone of the world’s nuclear order — turns 50.
The number of nuclear arms has been drastically reduced since a peak in the mid-1980s when there were about 70,000 nuclear warheads in the world.
While Kile said progress should not be underestimated, he also noted a number of worrying trends, such as the build-up of nuclear arms on both sides of the border between India and Pakistan, and the danger of a conventional conflict escalating to a nuclear one.
There is also a more general trend toward an “increased salience” of nuclear weapons, where changing strategic doctrines, particularly in the US, are giving nuclear weapons an expanded role in both military operations and national security dialogue, Kile said.
“I think the trend is moving away from where we were five years ago, where the world’s nuclear weapons were being marginalized,” Kile said.
Former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon recently urged nuclear powers to “get serious” about disarmament and warned there was a “very real risk” that decades of work on international arms control could collapse following the US pullout of the Iran nuclear deal, which he said sent the wrong signal to North Korea.
Global disarmament efforts also suffered a blow when the US announced in February it would withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, prompting Russia to say it would also suspend its participation.
In related developments, Iran yesterday said it would breach internationally agreed curbs on its stock of low-enriched uranium in 10 days, but European countries still had time to save the multi-party 2015 nuclear deal.
“We have quadrupled the rate of enrichment and even increased it more recently, so that in 10 days it will bypass the 300kg limit,” Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said on state television. “There is still time ... if European countries act.”
Iran could enrich up to 20 percent for domestic uses, he said.
That would be just a step away from weapons-grade levels.
Tehran last month said it would reduce compliance with the 2015 pact to protest the US’ decision to unilaterally pull out of the deal.
The accord caps Iran’s stock of low-enriched uranium at 300kg of uranium hexafluoride enriched to 3.67 percent or its equivalent for 15 years.
Additional reporting by Reuters and Bloomberg
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