STOCKHOLM: The world’s nuclear-armed states are beefing up their atomic arsenals and walking out of arms control pacts, creating a new era of threat that has brought an end to decades of reductions in stockpiles since the Cold War, a think tank said on Monday.
Of the total global inventory of an estimated 12,241 warheads in January 2025, about 9,614 were in military stockpiles for potential use, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in its yearbook, an annual inventory of the world’s most dangerous weapons.
Around 2,100 of the deployed warheads were kept in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles, nearly all belonging to either the US or Russia.
SIPRI said global tensions had seen the nine nuclear states — the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel — plan to increase their stockpiles.
“The era of reductions in the number of nuclear weapons in the world, which had lasted since the end of the Cold War, is coming to an end,” SIPRI said. “Instead, we see a clear trend of growing nuclear arsenals, sharpened nuclear rhetoric and the abandonment of arms control agreements.”
