According to two reports released on Monday, nuclear-armed nations increased their spending on atomic weapons arsenals by a third over the previous five years as they modernized their stockpiles in response to escalating geopolitical tensions.
The nine nuclear-armed states in the world collectively invested $91 billion in their arsenals in the previous year, according per a recent report released by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
Both that research and another from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) showed that states possessing nuclear weapons are increasing their investment significantly in order to modernize and even introduce new nuclear weapons.
“I think it is fair to say there is a nuclear arms race under way,” ICAN chief Melissa Parke told AFP.
In the meantime, a statement from Wilfred Wan, the director of SIPRI’s weapons of mass destruction program, cautioned that “we have not seen nuclear weapons playing such a prominent role in international relations since the Cold War”.
According to SIPRI’s research, the projected total number of nuclear weapons in the world decreased slightly from 12,512 at the beginning of the previous year to 12,121 at the beginning of this one.
While some of those were older warheads slated for dismantlement, 9,585 were listed as being in stockpiles for possible use, which is nine more than a year earlier.
Additionally, 2,100 people were under “high operational alert” for ballistic missiles.
Nearly all of those were held by the United States 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.
