The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute states that Russia and the US possess “almost 90% of all nuclear weapons.”
The world’s nine nuclear-armed states have increased their dependence on nuclear weapons, a watchdog has said.
A report released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on Monday said states increased their spending on modernizing their atomic arsenals by a third last year. The watchdog pointed to the contribution of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to the deterioration of international security.
Wilfred Wan, director of SIPRI’s weapons of mass destruction program, said nuclear weapons had not been seen “playing such a prominent role in international relations since the Cold War.”
The report concluded that the effects of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are “visible in almost all aspects of the arms, disarmament and international security issues examined”.
The nine nuclear-weapon states – the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel – have modernized their nuclear arsenals and several have “deployed new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapons systems in 2023”. , SIPRI found.
The estimated global inventory of 12,121 warheads in January 2024 marked a reduction of 391 compared to the previous year, with approximately 9,585 in military arsenals for possible use.
However, about 3,904 of them were deployed with missiles and aircraft, which is 60 more than in January 2023.
The vast majority of these deployed warheads belong to Russia and the US, although China is believed to have “some warheads on high operational alert” for the first time.
Separately, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) said total combined spending on nuclear arsenals grew by $10.7 billion to $91.4 billion in 2023.
The US accounted for 80% of the increase in spending. Its budget of $51.5 billion was greater than that of the other eight nuclear-armed countries combined.
The next biggest spender was China, with $11.8 billion, ICAN said. Russia came in third place, with US$8.3 billion.
“While the global total of nuclear warheads continues to fall as Cold War-era weapons are gradually dismantled, regrettably, we continue to see annual increases in the number of operational nuclear warheads,” said SIPRI Director Dan Smith.
“This trend appears likely to continue and likely accelerate in the coming years and is extremely concerning.”
The report adds that Russia and the US possess “almost 90 percent of all nuclear weapons.” The global size of its arsenals remained “relatively stable in 2023,” he said, although he noted that Russia is estimated to have deployed about 36 more warheads with operational forces than in January 2023.
In its SIPRI 2024 Yearbook, the institute said that transparency about nuclear forces has declined in both countries due to Russia’s war against Ukraine and debates surrounding nuclear sharing agreements.
Washington suspended its bilateral strategic stability dialogue with Russia, and last year Moscow announced it was abandoning the New START nuclear treaty.
SIPRI added that although there were allegations that Russia deployed nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory, there was “no conclusive visual evidence that actual deployment of warheads took place.”
The institute stressed that all its estimates were approximate and it reviews its data on global nuclear forces every year based on new information and updates to previous assessments.
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