SIPRI Year Book 2021:
Swedish think tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has released its Year Book 2021.
Key findings:
- India possessed an estimated 156 nuclear warheads at the start of 2021, compared with 150 at the start of last year, while Pakistan had 165 warheads, up from 160 in 2020.
- China’s nuclear arsenal consisted of 350 warheads, up from 320 at the start of 2020.
- The nine nuclear-armed states — the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — together possessed an estimated 13,080 nuclear weapons at the start of 2021.
- Russia and the U.S. together possessed over 90% of global nuclear weapons.
- The overall number of warheads in global military stockpiles now appears to be increasing, a worrisome sign that the declining trend that has characterized global nuclear arsenals since the end of the Cold War has stalled.
- The larger concern is that India and Pakistan are seeking new technologies and capabilities that dangerously undermine each other’s defense under the nuclear threshold.
- India-Pakistan “risk stumbling into using their nuclear weapons through miscalculation or misinterpretation in a future crisis.
- China’s evolving profile as a nuclear weapons state was compounding India’s security challenges.
