Kathmandu. Nine countries in the world have nuclear weapons. The 2024 report shows that all these nine countries are increasing their nuclear programs to dangerous levels. In 2024, these nine countries have launched programs to modernize their nuclear programs. Under which advanced nuclear bombs are being made.
This has been revealed in the 2025 report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The report revealed that in the 1980s there were about 64,000 nuclear weapons in the world. But now that number has come down to 12,241. However, this decline has started to increase again.
SIPRI Director Dan Smith said nuclear disarmament has now stopped and has been replaced by rapid modernisation of weapons. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of the Cold War until 2010, the world did an excellent job on the nuclear disarmament front. Thousands of nuclear weapons were destroyed during this period. Of these, Russia destroyed the most nuclear weapons. But that era has passed again.
The New START treaty between the U.S. and Russia , which aimed to limit the number of warheads, has now formally expired. The alarming thing is that the number of nuclear weapons is no longer increasing again, but they are being made more deadly, mobile and AI-enabled. Which means that the security of the whole world is now under threat.
Threat of nuclear war in the world
According to SIPRI Director Smith, the number of nuclear weapons has started increasing again since the second term of former US President Barack Obama. The world’s nine nuclear weapons – the US, Russia, China, France, Britain, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel – are now developing their nuclear weapons.
According to SIPRI, as of early 2025, 9,614 warheads were in stock for military use. Of these, about 3,912 were deployed on warhead missiles or aircraft and about 2,100 were on high-level operational alert.
The U.S. and Russia have 90% of these weapons. However, China’s number has now exceeded 600 and China is now producing nuclear weapons at the fastest rate in the world.
India has also started increasing its weapons gradually in 2024. While Pakistan is developing new delivery systems and more fragmentation materials. Israel, which has so far remained silent on its nuclear policy, has recently begun upgrading plutonium production facilities in the Negev Desert. This makes it clear that with tensions in the Middle East, the nuclear arms race is intensifying in the same proportions.
In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference. In which he spoke against the us-dominated world order, nato’s eastward expansion and disarmament. But two years later, in 2009, Obama announced the goal of complete denuclearization in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. “The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War,” he said, adding that the United States would take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons and negotiate a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia. ’
The treaty was also signed and entered into force in 2011. But after the Ukraine war, things changed again. When the Biden administration published a review report on the nuclear situation in 2022, it talked about rapidly increasing U.S. nuclear reserves.
The SIPRI report focuses on the ‘Asian Nuclear Triangle’ being formed between India, Pakistan and China. China is ramping up its weapons and the pace at which it is operating ICBM missiles like DF-41 poses a new strategic challenge for India.
On the other hand, Pakistan continues to work on strategic nuclear weapons, MIRV-capable missiles and sea-based systems. Regarding India, which has so far adopted a ‘no first use’ policy, SIPRI said, “India is now investing more in its delivery system and second strike capability. The second strike means that if someone launches a nuclear attack on India and India is not in a position to respond by throwing an atomic bomb in that country, Then India will still have a second strike, which will immediately hit the nuclear bomb in the country that launches the nuclear bomb. That is, if India ever miscalculates between China and Pakistan, the entire region could be a victim of nuclear war. ’
SIPRI’s signs are clear that nuclear weapons are no longer just the last option of war but also a part of strategic dialogue. These conversations are now being influenced by dangerous aspects such as AI, space defense and high-operational alerts. – Agency
