My Take | China’s stockpile of nuclear arms pales in comparison to America’s
- Latest study by ICAN finds that the United States spends far more on such weapons than all the other nuclear-armed states combined
When Washington accuses someone of doing something nasty, you can be sure it is already doing it, except on an unimaginably worse scale.
Last week, the Pentagon said the United States would need to respond to a dramatic increase in China’s nuclear weapons capabilities by modernising its own arsenal and expanding its nuclear umbrella over allies.
What’s more, the US is expected to spend more on nukes in the coming years. In 2021, the US Congressional Budget Office estimated that Washington would commit US$634 billion over the next decade to upgrade its nuclear arsenal, a 28 per cent jump over a previous 10-year projection. These include developing a new W76-2 low-yield nuclear warhead for submarine-launched ballistic missiles and further still, a new nuclear submarine-launched cruise missile.
“It’s no secret the PLA is in the midst of a major nuclear modernisation,” Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defence for Indo-Pacific security affairs, said.
No secret? Actually, that’s only on the say-so of the Pentagon, which claims China will have 1,500 nuclear warheads by the middle of the next decade, from the current 410, as counted by the ICAN.