Ricky Scaparo – June 15, 2022
The risk of a nuclear conflict is the highest it has been since the times of the Cold War, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The “SIPRI Yearbook 2022,” a report published Monday assessing the current state of armaments, disarmament, and international security around the world, stated that nuclear arsenals are expected to grow over the coming decade.
Despite the fact that the total number of nuclear weapons in the world has slightly declined between January 2021 and January 2022 (just before the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), the number is likely to increase in the near future, according to SIPRI.
Some 90 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenal is owned by Russia and the United States, with a total inventory of respectively 5,977 and 5,428 nuclear weapons as of 2022. The nine nuclear-armed states—the U.S., Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea—continue to modernize their nuclear arsenals.
The weapons that have been dismantled in the U.S. and Russia last year were already “retired” from military services, leaving the arsenal of useable nuclear weapons of the two countries virtually unchanged.
“Although there were some significant gains in both nuclear arms control and nuclear disarmament in the past year, the risk of nuclear weapons being used seems higher now than at any time since the height of the Cold War,” said SIPRI Director Dan Smith.