Washington:
The US State Department published on Tuesday the quantity of nuclear warheads the nation stockpiles for the very first time in 4 years, immediately after former president Donald Trump placed a blackout on the information.
As of September 30, 2020, the US military maintained 3,750 active and inactive nuclear warheads, down by 55 from a year earlier and by 72 from the very same date in 2017.
The figure was also the lowest level due to the fact the US nuclear stockpile peaked at the height of the Cold War with Russia in 1967, when the total was 31,255 warheads.
The numbers have been released Tuesday amid an work by the administration of President Joe Biden to restart arms controls talks with Russia immediately after they stalled below Trump.
“Increasing the transparency of states’ nuclear stockpiles is important to nonproliferation and disarmament efforts,” the State Department mentioned in a statement.
Trump, who pulled the United States from the Iran nuclear deal and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia, also left a different critical pact, the New Start Treaty on the rocks last year prior to its scheduled expiration on February 5.
New Start caps the quantity of nuclear warheads held by Washington and Moscow, and letting it expire could have sparked a reversal of warhead reductions on each sides.
Trump mentioned he wanted a new deal that incorporates China, which only has a fraction of the warheads that the United States and Russia have.
Biden, who came in to workplace on January 20, right away proposed a 5-year extension to New Start, which Russian President Vladimir Putin immediately agreed to.
The deal caps at 1,550 the quantity of nuclear warheads that can be deployed by Moscow and Washington.
Last week Russian and US diplomats held talks behind closed doors in Geneva to commence discussions on a successor to New Start and also controls on standard weapons.
A US official named the talks “productive,” but each sides mentioned the mere truth of holding the talks was positive.
According to a January 2021 tally by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which incorporates retired warheads — not counted in the State Department’s numbers — the United States had 5,550 warheads, compared to 6,255 in Russia, 350 in China, 225 in Britain, and 290 in France.
India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea have with each other about 460 nuclear warheads, according to the institute.
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