A recent study by the peace research institute SIPRI shows: The number of nuclear weapons worldwide is falling, but that is no reason to sound the all-clear.
Political efforts to reduce the number of nuclear weapons worldwide have been underway for decades – with varying degrees of success: at the peak of the Cold War in the mid-1980s, there were around 70,000 warheads in the arsenals of nuclear powers, but according to the Swedish peace research institute SIPRI, there are now “only” 13,400, 3.4 percent fewer than a year ago. According to SIPRI, the trend towards reduction has been continuing for some time, but the reduction in warheads is slowing down noticeably. This is mainly due to the fact that the United States and Russia, by far the two largest nuclear powers (they possess 90 percent of all nuclear weapons), have now decommissioned most of their old and no longer needed weapons. The rest are now being modernized and replaced with extensive programmes. According to researcher Shannon Kile, some of the weapons systems currently being developed have an expected lifespan well into the 2080s.
In addition, both the USA and Russia have recently given nuclear weapons new or expanded roles in their military plans and doctrines. Shannon Kile, Director of SIPRI’s Nuclear Disarmament and Arms Control Program, is therefore rather pessimistic about the future: “The stalemate over New START and the termination of the 1987 Soviet-US Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) in 2019 suggest that the era of bilateral nuclear arms control agreements between Russia and the US may be coming to an end.”
