New Global Nuclear Arms Race

One of the key findings is that although the total number of nuclear weapons declined in 2021, new global deadly nuclear arms race is expected to increase in the coming years for the first time since the Cold War.

Matt Korda, one of the co-authors of the report, said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has on several occasions made reference to the use of nuclear weapons during the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile several countries, including the Communist China and Britain, are either officially or unofficially upgrading and ramping up their arsenals, the research institute said.

The number of nuclear weapons worldwide has declined slightly since the end of the Cold War. The nine nuclear-armed states: Britain, the Communist Party of China, France, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, the United States and Russia, have a total of 12,705 nuclear warheads at the start of 2022, a decrease of 375 warheads from last year.

At the start of 2022, the U.K., Communist China, France, Russia and the U.S. issued a joint statement that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
Yet all five countries are actually upgrading their nuclear arsenals and increasing the status of nuclear weapons in their military strategies, according to the institute