Research centre: ‘Bleak’ prospect for global arms control

While the total number of nuclear warheads possessed by the world’s nine nuclear-armed states has decreased this year, these countries continue to modernise their nuclear arsenal and the “outlook for arms control is bleak”, an independent research institute has found.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) lists the nine nuclear-armed states as the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea).

It found in its 2020 Yearbook that the nine countries possessed 13,400 warheads, down from 13,865 in 2019.

The number of the warheads deployed with operational forces is 3,720, including 1,800 “kept in a state of high operational alert”, the reported added.

SIPRI attributes the decrease of the total number of nuclear warheads in 2019 to “the dismantlement of retired nuclear weapons in Russia and the USA—which together still possess over 90 per cent of global nuclear weapons.”

READ: Iran calls on Russia, China to stand against US plan to extend arms embargo