The countries with nuclear weapons

Fears of a nuclear conflict soared after Russia invaded Ukraine and Vladimir Putin put his nation’s nuclear arms on “special alert”.

At the start of the invasion, the BBC reported that the Russian president hinted at a nuclear attack, warning that “whoever tries to hinder us” in Ukraine would see consequences “you have never seen in your history”. He then upped the stakes further by ordering Russia’s military to put its deterrence forces, which include nuclear weapons, on “special alert”.

The UK’s Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab dismissed it as “rhetoric and brinkmanship” and others agreed that it was just part of Putin’s psychological warfare.

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However, The Times’ Daniel Finkelstein questioned why strategists would expect Russia to be “reasonable” with his weapons of mass destruction when the invasion of Ukraine has been “to put it politely, unreasonable”.

It is time we “discuss our approach to weaponry that might kill millions, that could even make the Earth uninhabitable”, he wrote.

The i news site’s special correspondent Patrick Cockburn said the risk of a nuclear war is “becoming greater than it was in the first Cold War because Russia under President Vladimir Putin is much weaker – and therefore more likely to use nuclear weapons – than the Soviet Union at the height of its power”.

Cockburn forecast that “as the war in Ukraine increasingly sucks in other powers and Putin becomes more desperate, the likelihood of a nuclear exchange will increase”.

Here are the countries that are known – and those that are rumoured - to have nuclear weapons.

Nuclear possessor states

“At the dawn of the nuclear age, the US hoped to maintain a monopoly on its new weapon,” according to the Arms Control Association (ACA). “But the secrets and the technology for building the atomic bomb soon spread.”

A total of at least 31 countries have “flirted with nuclear weapons at one time or another”, said The Economist.

Nine nations are currently known to have nuclear arms.

Latest data from the Arms Control Association suggests that more than 90% of the world’s total nuclear warheads belong to Russia and the US. Putin is believed to be sitting on “the world’s biggest stockpile of nuclear warheads”, with an estimated total of 6,257, “followed closely” by the US, at 5,500, said CNN.

China, France and the UK “round out the top five”, the broadcaster continued, with 350, 290 and 225 respectively.

The UN Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which came into force in 1970, classifies these five countries as nuclear weapon states (NWS). The treaty committed the UN’s 191 member states to preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons, with a goal of achieving total disarmament.

The overall number of nuclear weapons in the world has decreased from 70,000 in 1968 to around 14,000, according to the BBC.

However, three states who did not sign the historic treaty are known to possess nuclear arsenals. The Arms Control Association estimates that Pakistan has 165 nuclear warheads and that India has 156, while Israel is thought to have 90.

North Korea is also believed to have between 40 and 50 warheads, “which it sees as insurance against a pre-emptive attack by the US”, wrote the BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner. The hermit state has conducted a series of nuclear tests since withdrawing from the NPT in 2003.

The country’s state media agency KCNA reported that a hypersonic missile had successfully been tested at the start of 2022, news that “will alarm its neighbours, notably Japan and South Korea”, Gardner continued. This type of weapon is “unpredictable” and “hard to intercept”, and “they also leave nations guessing whether they are carrying a conventional high explosive warhead or a nuclear one”.

Iran, Iraq and Libya have also breached the treaty’s terms by pursuing nuclear activities, “and Syria is suspected of having done the same”, said the Arms Control Association.

The Economist cautioned that while the nuclear ambitions of “geopolitical minnows” such as Libya and Syria may be quashed, “in the next decade the threat is likely to include economic and diplomatic heavyweights whose ambitions would be harder to restrain”.

The Arms Control Association struck a more positive note, noting that “dire decades-old forecasts that the world would soon be home to dozens of nuclear-armed have not come to pass”.