America reveals the number of nuclear bombs
On Tuesday, the US State Department released the size of the US stockpile of nuclear warheads for the first time in four years, after a blackout imposed by former President Donald Trump on this data.
The ministry said that on September 30, 2020, the US military possessed 3,750 activated or inactive nuclear warheads, which is 55 less than the previous year and 72 more than the same day of 2017.
This number is the lowest since the US nuclear stockpile reached its peak at the height of the Cold War with Russia in 1967, when it amounted to 31,255 warheads.
The announcement of the numbers on Tuesday came as the administration of President Joe Biden made efforts to restart arms control talks with Russia that have faltered under Trump.
"Increasing transparency about countries' nuclear stockpiles is important to nonproliferation and disarmament efforts," the State Department said in a statement.
Trump, who withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, also withdrew from another agreement, the New START treaty, last year before it expired on February 5.
This treaty provides for a maximum number of nuclear warheads that Washington and Moscow can keep, and withdrawal from them could have reversed the reduction of these warheads by both sides.
Trump said at the time that he wanted a new deal that included China, which has few warheads compared to the United States and Russia.
But Biden, who took office on January 20, immediately proposed a five-year extension of the treaty, which Russian President Vladimir Putin quickly agreed to.
The treaty limits the number of nuclear warheads that Moscow and Washington can deploy to 1,550.
Russian and US diplomats held closed-door meetings last week in Geneva to begin discussions on the TEL-START treaty and also on conventional arms control.
A US official described the talks as "productive," but both sides said it was a positive thing to even have the talks.
According to statistics published in January 2021 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, including warheads that were withdrawn and not included in the US State Department figures, the United States possesses 5,550 of these warheads, compared to 6,255 in Russia, 350 in China, 225 in Britain, and 290 in France.
The institute stated that India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea together possess about 460 nuclear warheads.
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