Where Are the World's Nuclear Weapons?

by Tamim Ansary

Recently someone asked me which countries have nuclear bombs, and how many
they all have.

I was surprised to realize I didn't know. And yet I've spent most of my life
actively worried about powerful states with big bombs. I was born three
years after the nuclear bomb was first detonated and four years before the
first thermonuclear bomb was perfected. By the time I could read, I already
knew the world could end at any moment. People my age are aptly called
boomers; the Armageddon Generation would fit too.

We saw nuclear Armageddon as a possibility based on two facts:

a.. The world was divided into two hostile camps
b.. Each side possessed enough nuclear bombs to destroy life on Earth
Once the nuclear exchange started, we were given to understand, we'd all be
dead in about an hour. Even in the old days, I didn't know exactly how many
bombs anyone had--just that it was some multiple of enough-to-kill-everyone.
What else mattered?

The forgotten fear

Today, terrorism seems to occupy the slot that nuclear Armageddon once held
in our public psyche. Yet aren't the bombs still around? When the Soviet
Union broke into 15 independent countries, did its arsenal vanish? Did the
nuclear powers in other parts of the world stop building new weapons? What
about that rumor about South Africa ...? And didn't North Korea ...? And
isn't ...? Yikes!

So which countries still have nuclear weapons?

Good question.

Dug up the answer

According to information compiled by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an
organization devoted to monitoring the status of the nuclear threat
worldwide, nine countries had nukes by April 2004. The nine countries are
listed below. Each figure includes the approximate number of both tactical
and strategic bombs (nuclear and thermonuclear, or "big" and "really
humongous").

Country
Warheads

United States
10,455

Russia
8,400

China
400

France
350

Israel*
250

United Kingdom
200

India**
65

Pakistan**
40

North Korea***
8

TOTAL
20,168

Asterisks explained

* Israel has a policy called "nuclear opacity" or "nuclear ambiguity," which
consists of refusing to confirm or deny that it has nuclear weapons at all.
In 1986, however, whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear
weapons worker, published pictures of nuclear weapons facilities in Israel.
Today, experts agree that Israel has between 100 and 300 warheads (and
Israel doesn't deny it).

** India and Pakistan both admit (boast?) that they have weapons, but are
cagey about how many. Estimates for India run from 40 to 90 and for Pakistan
from 30 to 50.

*** North Korea is anybody's guess. At the end of 2003, U.S. intelligence
experts were surmising it had three bombs, but four months later they
tentatively raised their estimate to eight. They also said North Korea is
geared up to build about six bombs a year from here on out.

In short, there are now some 20,000 fully operational nukes pointed at
someone in this world.

The wannabes

Meanwhile, a second tier of nations loiters outside the clubhouse door,
looking for ways to break in. I count seven of these Nuclear Weapons State
Wannabes, based on the following criteria:

a.. They possess nuclear reactors--and might therefore produce their own
highly enriched uranium or plutonium, the indispensable ingredients of
nuclear bombs
b.. They have scientists and engineers with sufficient know-how to build
bombs
c.. They have missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads
d.. They have indicated a hankering for nuclear weapons
e.. The seven wannabes are: Egypt, Libya, Syria, South Korea, Taiwan,
Iran, and Serbia and Montenegro.
Good news/bad news

No one wants to say it for fear of jinxing the progress, and I'll deny I
ever said it myself a few paragraphs from now, but the last 12 years have
seen some actual good news on the nuke front. Check it out:

1.. The world total has plummeted! The Soviet arsenal alone peaked at
39,197 in 1985--Russia now has about 8,400. The United States is also way
down from its peak weapons stockpile--in 1975 it had a total of 26,675; now
it has 10,455.
2.. The Soviet arsenal remains in the hands of a single state. The breakup
of the Soviet empire could have given birth to 14 new nuclear powers: a
disaster! Instead, all the other Soviet republics opted to cede their bombs
and missiles to Russia. Phew! (One hair trigger is presumably safer than
15.)
3.. The biggest stockpiles are still shrinking. Russia and America have
agreed to reduce their strategic (thermonuclear a.k.a. really humongous)
bombs to a maximum of 2,200 each by the year 2012. (Russia currently has
about 5,000 and the United States about 7,000.)
4.. Russia will probably make its reductions. That's because Russia no
longer has any use for its nuclear bombs. War with America is off the table
for this ramshackle loser of the Cold War, so the bombs are just an
expensive burden now. They'd be gone already if getting rid of them didn't
cost money too.
5.. Nuclear testing is way down. If you average it out, a nuclear bomb
went off every 9 days for 50 years (1945-1995). In the last 8 years, it's
dropped to one every 380 days. That's mostly because of the 1996 treaty that
prohibits nuclear explosions anywhere, period. So far, 164 countries have
signed the treaty and 84 have ratified it. (Sadly, the United States is not
one of the latter.)
6.. One country has dropped out of the nuclear club. South Africa had
nuclear bombs but dismantled them and shut down its nuclear weapons
program--proving that total disarmament can be done.
Mutually assured destruction

Nuclear arsenals grew like cancers during the Cold War because the world was
divided into two hostile camps, both of which pursued a policy of mutually
assured destruction--MAD for short. Each side knew that it would seal its
own doom if it attacked the other. During the Cold War this strategy led to
a certain stability.

Now there is only one superpower. But instead of a single fault line
dividing the world, there are cracks, cracks, everywhere.

And what d'ya know: The dynamics that provoked a global divide during the
Cold War now engender local tensions along the many smaller fissures. But
with so many parties interlinked and interlocked, mutually assured
destruction may no longer be a formula for stability.

Proliferation chains

China wanted a bomb because it stopped trusting the Soviet Union.

Then India wanted a bomb because it had bad blood with China.

Then Pakistan wanted a bomb because it had bad blood with India.

Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Israel built nuclear weapons for protection
against the Muslim states.

Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iran, and Iraq then decided they needed the security of
mutually assured destruction vis-a-vis Israel.

And let's not forget North Korea versus everybody.

Or Taiwan versus China. Or the government of the Philippines versus the
insurgents of Mindanao.

You can keep going like this for a long time. The harder you look, the more
pairs of (ever-smaller) opposing parties pop into view throughout the world,
each a potential Petri dish for mad thinking.

Want more?

The United States may soon begin building a new generation of nuclear bombs
called bunker busters. Designed to destroy concrete bunkers buried deep
inside the earth, they may also be "small enough" for actual use in battle.

In preparation, Congress has lifted America's self-imposed moratorium on
testing and Nevada nuclear testing sites have been revamped so they will be
ready for use in 18 rather than 36 months.

Meanwhile, shadowy sub-state groups we call terrorist organizations are
interested in small nuclear weapons too. This makes the collapse of the
Soviet Union a problem after all, for in addition to the bombs already
deployed, Russia has enough highly enriched uranium and plutonium for at
least 60,000 more bombs!

The thousands of scientists in charge of these lethal stockpiles work for
low salaries and sometimes get no paycheck at all. And organized crime
syndicates exert tremendous power in the Russian economy. Shadowy arms
dealers surely see opportunities here.

The nightmare possibility we boomers grew up wit