“Despite the recent progress in international talks on a treaty banning nuclear weapons, long-term modernisations programs are under way in all nine states,” said Shannon Kile, a senior researcher at SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said.
“This suggests that none of these states will be prepared to give up their nuclear arsenals for the foreseeable future.”
Another international group of former military and diplomatic leaders is even less optimistic, and is warning of an “unacceptably high” risk of global nuclear war. “The Nuclear Crisis Group assesses that the risk of nuclear weapons use, intended or otherwise, is unacceptably high and that all states must take constructive steps to reduce these risks,” Nuclear Crisis Group (NCG) stated.
The Nuclear Crisis Group — a subcommittee of Global Zero, an organisation that supports the total abolition of nuclear weapons — issued an 11-page report on nuclear arms proliferation.
“The Nuclear Crisis Group assesses that the risk of nuclear weapons use, intended or otherwise, is unacceptably high and that all states must take constructive steps to reduce these risks,” NCG warned.
India and Pakistan, are the biggest threats because both lack security features in their programs, NCG noted. In speaking to Politico about the NCG report, Global Zero co-founder and former nuclear missile officer Bruce Blair said the two countries lack the sophistication of improved safety: “They lack safety features and the risk they would detonate from an accident is uncomfortably high. They have not developed the safety features that the US and Russia have.”
The report recommended better communication, no-first-use policies, and improved cybersecurity measures to guard against the hacking of nuclear operations.
Both were expanding their nuclear capabilities by land, sea and air, which could have consequences in the near future, SIPRI noted: “India and Pakistan are expanding their military fissile material production capabilities on a scale that may lead to significant increases in the size of their nuclear weapon inventories over the next decade.”
SIPRI estimated that Washington may spend up to $1 trillion over the next 30 years to ramp up its nuclear weapons programme.
The nine states together have some 15 000 nuclear weapons. The US and Russia possess 93 percent of all nuclear weapons in the world.
France, the world’s third nuclear power, has plans to develop a next-generation ballistic missile submarine in operation by 2035, according to SIPRI: “The French Ministry of Defense has initiated studies for a successor missile, with a focus on enhanced stealth and hypersonic technologies.”
