#China, North Korea boost nuclear arsenals as worldwide stockpile shrinks

While the rest of the world’s nuclear powers have shrunk their arsenals of nuclear weapons, China and North Korea are two of six countries that have boosted their stockpiles, according to a report Monday from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

China added 30 weapons while North Korea and the four others, India, Britain, Pakistan and Israel, added fewer than 20, according to the South China Morning Post.

“China is in the middle of a significant modernization and expansion of its arsenal, and India and Pakistan are also thought to be increasing the size of their nuclear arsenals,” the report said, naming three countries whose relationships have been fraught in recent years.

Meanwhile, global stockpiles continued to decline primarily because the two largest nuclear powers — the US and Russia — have decreased the number of warheads they have, mostly because they are dismantling aging weapons.

“At the same time, both the US and Russia have extensive and expensive programs under way to replace and modernize their nuclear warheads, missile and aircraft delivery systems, and nuclear weapon production facilities,” the report said.

The US has 1,750 deployed warheads on missiles or bases with operational forces — and 4,050 reserve warheads or retired warheads waiting to be dismantled, the Morning Post reported.

Russia has 1,570 deployed warheads and 4,805 warheads either stored or waiting to be dismantled.

At the beginning of 2020, nine countries — the US, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — had an estimated 13,400 nuclear weapons, 3,720 of which were deployed with active-duty forces.

About 1,800 of these were kept in a state of high alert, the report said.

In addition to nukes, threats such as chemical and biological weapons were also growing, making the world more dangerous than before, according to the report, which also warned of an arms race in outer space.

Many superpowers look to the heavens as a possible battlefield, including the US, where President Trump has created Space Force as a fifth branch of the US military.

Zhou Chenming, a military expert based in Beijing, said the changes in the world’s military build-up are resulting in an increasingly precarious balance between war and peace.

“Many countries are now developing their own anti-missile systems that protect countries from being hit by a nuclear warhead, but once the systems are highly developed, it will lead to military adventurism — some countries might take the initiative to attack other nations — and make the world even more dangerous,” Zhou said.

The news also comes amid a war of words between Trump and Chinese Communist Party authorities over the origins of the coronavirus pandemic and other issues.

It also came as talks between the US and North Korea over its nuclear arsenal have broken down, with dictator Kim Jong Un vowing to resume testing.