Watchdog warns reliance on nuclear weapons rising amid global tension
Al Jazeera
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute says Russia and the US possess ‘almost 90 percent of all nuclear weapons’.
The world’s nine nuclear-armed states have raised their reliance on nuclear weapons, a watchdog has said.
A report released by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on Monday said the states increased their spending on modernising their atomic arsenals by one-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 programme, said nuclear weapons have not been seen “playing such a prominent role in international relations since the Cold War”.
The report found that the effects of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are “visible in almost every aspect of the issues connected to armaments, disarmament and international security examined”.
The nine nuclear armed states – the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel – modernised their nuclear arsenals and several “deployed new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems in 2023”, SIPRI found.
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