Two reports published this Monday send serious warnings about the actions of the nine nuclear powers and the threat of this scenario for the planet.
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According to these studies, both independent, These countries have modernized their arsenals in recent years due to increased geopolitical tensions, evidenced by a historic increase in spending on nuclear weapons..
On the one hand, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a global civil society coalition based in Switzerland, revealed that nuclear weapon states – Russia, the United States, France, India, China, Israel, the United Kingdom, Pakistan and North Korea – spent a total of $91 billion in this area last year.
And, for its part, the Stockholm International Peace Studies Institute (SIPRI) pointed out that The spending of these countries increased considerably as they modernized their nuclear weapons and even deployed new systems of this type.
We have not seen nuclear weapons play such an important role in international relations since the Cold War.
Of the total inventory estimated in January of this year, SIPRI explains, of 12,121 warheads – understood as the part of a nuclear weapon in which the nuclear explosive and the mechanisms that activate it are located – some 9,585 were in military arsenals for use potential; 3,904 of them, deployed with missiles and aircraft, 60 more than a year ago, and about 2,100, in a state of maximum alert with ballistic missiles.
In this context, analysts do not hesitate to warn that the nuclear threat today is palpable, perhaps like very few times before in history.
“It is reasonable to say that there is a nuclear arms race underway,” said Melissa Parke, director of ICAN. Adding to that perception is Wilfred Wan, director of a program on weapons of mass destruction at SIPRI, who noted that “we have not seen nuclear weapons play such an important role in international relations since the Cold War.”
What are the countries with the most nuclear weapons?
SIPRI calculations estimate that the vast majority of nuclear warheads belong to Russia and the United States. Between the two countries they possess 90 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world. The report explains that the size of its arsenals remained stable in 2023, although Russia is believed to have deployed about 36 more warheads with operational forces.
Likewise, this report highlights that India, Pakistan and North Korea are seeking the ability to deploy multiple warheads on ballistic missiles, something that Russia, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and now China have already done.
Regarding North Korea, SIPRI also found that it continues to prioritize its military nuclear program as a central element of its security strategy. And it estimates that the country has already assembled about 50 nuclear warheads and has enough fissile material to reach a total of up to 90 warheads, in both cases significant increases compared to 2023 estimates.
“North Korea is placing new emphasis on developing its tactical nuclear weapons arsenal. There is growing concern that he intends to use these weapons very soon in a conflict”explained Matt Korda, associate researcher at SIPRI.
Regarding the other powers, he outlines some details, such as that Israel – which does not publicly acknowledge possessing nuclear weapons – is modernizing its nuclear arsenal and appears to be strengthening its Dimona plutonium production reactor and that France continued with the development of a nuclear submarine launching ballistic missiles. generation and a new air-launched cruise missile.
The United Kingdom, meanwhile, is expected to increase its nuclear weapons arsenal, as anticipated by the British government in 2021. And from India and Pakistan, SIPRI points out that they continued to develop new types of nuclear delivery systems, especially New Delhi, which “appears to be placing increasing emphasis on longer-range weapons, including those capable of hitting targets throughout China.”
“While the global total of nuclear warheads continues to decline as Cold War-era weapons are gradually dismantled, we unfortunately continue to see year-on-year increases in the number of operational warheads,” said Dan Smith, director of SIPRI. “This trend seems likely to continue and is likely to accelerate in the coming years, so it is extremely worrying,” he concluded.
That race, of course, requires a considerable economic injection, which, according to those who follow these budgets, reaches scandalous levels. In its report this Monday, ICAN reveals that spending on nuclear weapons worldwide increased by $10.8 billion in 2023 compared to the previous year.
The United States accounted for 80 percent of that increase. The US share of total spending, at $51.5 billion, “is larger than that of all other nuclear weapons states combined,” ICAN said. They are followed by China (11.8 billion) and Russia (8.3 billion).
Nuclear powers in total spent $2,898 per second last year to finance these weapons, according to the report. In fact, those amounts spent on nuclear weapons increased 33 percent since 2018 (which at the time stood at $68.2 billion), when ICAN began collecting the data.
So, in all these years, These nine countries invested some $387 billion in these weapons, the report concluded.
In this regard, Melissa Parke even denounced the “unacceptable use of public funds” and called these expenses “obscene.” According to the director of ICAN, these funds represent more than what the UN World Food Program estimates is necessary to end world hunger. “And we could plant a million trees for every minute of spending on nuclear weapons,” he added.
The case of China is worrying: will it equal Russia and the United States?
Both reports, especially the SIPRI one, put a special focus on China. The Swedish institute points out, for the first time, that Beijing has “some nuclear warheads in a state of high operational alert”, that is, prepared for immediate use.
China is increasing its nuclear arsenal faster than any other country, but in almost all nuclear states there are either significant plans or impulses to increase nuclear forces.
SIPRI estimates suggest that the number of China’s warheads increased from 410 to 500 between January 2023 and January 2024 and that this will continue to increase. By the end of the decade, depending on how it decides to structure its forces, the Asian giant could have at least as many intercontinental ballistic missiles as the United States or Russia, although its nuclear arsenal will continue to be “much smaller” than that of the two great powers.
“China is increasing its nuclear arsenal faster than any other country, but in almost all nuclear states there are either significant plans or impulses to increase nuclear forces,” SIPRI warns in its report.
Beijing reacted immediately and assured this Monday that it follows a nuclear strategy of “self-defense.” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said in a press conference that his country’s nuclear strategy “maintains a high degree of stability, continuity and predictability.”
Lin took advantage of the space to criticize the investment of “enormous sums of money” by the United States to update its nuclear arsenal. “That is an important issue regarding global strategic stability,” the spokesperson added.
Wars weaken nuclear diplomacy: why are Ukraine and Gaza key points?
In its report, SIPRI also reports that nuclear arms control and disarmament diplomacy suffered severe setbacks in 2023, the most serious being Russia’s withdrawal from the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as New START, the last agreement of nuclear weapons that remained between Russia and the United States, and which had been extended for five years in 2021.
That decision, announced by President Vladimir Putin in February of that year, occurred in the midst of the military offensive in Ukraine, which began in 2022. Moscow, as SIPRI notes in its report, has continued to make threats about the use of nuclear weapons in the context of Western support for kyiv. In May this year, Russia conducted tactical nuclear weapons exercises near the Ukrainian border.
For Wilfred Wan, “it is hard to believe that barely two years have passed since the leaders of the five largest nuclear weapons states jointly reaffirmed that “a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought.”
On the other hand, the report mentions the informal agreement in June of last year between Iran and the United States, which, it says, at first seemed to temporarily de-escalate tensions between both countries after Iranian military support for Russian forces in Ukraine. but that was canceled in October with the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, with attacks by insurgent groups supported by Iran against US forces in Iraq and Syria, which apparently put an end to diplomatic efforts between both countries.
“The war (in Gaza) also undermined efforts to involve Israel in the Conference on the Establishment of a Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East,” the SIPRI report adds.
Thus, the Swedish institute insists that the repercussions of these wars, as well as the armed conflicts registered in 50 other States during 2023, are evident with regard to disarmament and international security.
In the words of Dan Smith, director of SIPRI, “we find ourselves in one of the most dangerous periods in human history” and “There are numerous sources of instability: political rivalries, economic inequalities, ecological alterations and an accelerated arms race.”
For SIPRI, there is no time to waste. Smith summed it up this way: “The abyss is knocking at the door and it is time for the great powers to step back and reflect. Preferably together.”
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