Eighty-one years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world has not moved away from the nightmare of the atomic bomb. It continues to live under the shadow of a vast nuclear arsenal. According to the latest estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the world’s total nuclear inventory stood at 12,187 warheads in January 2026. The figure shows how far the dream of nuclear disarmament remains from the realities of power politics.
The current picture places Russia first with 5,420 warheads, followed by the United States with 5,042. The gap between these two powers and the other nuclear-armed states is striking. Together, Russia and the United States possess 10,462 warheads, accounting for roughly 86 percent of the world’s total nuclear inventory. Put simply, the overwhelming majority of the world’s nuclear destructive capability remains in the hands of two powers that have neither abandoned the legacy of the Cold War nor stopped modernizing it.
After these two nuclear giants, China ranks third with 620 warheads, an increase from last year’s estimate. SIPRI considers China to have the fastest-growing nuclear arsenal among the nuclear-armed states. Beijing is simultaneously developing new systems and expanding its missile infrastructure, a trend that could further complicate deterrence dynamics among the United States, Russia and China in the years ahead.
Next in line are France with 370 warheads, the United Kingdom with 225, India with 190, Pakistan with 170, Israel with 90 and North Korea with 60. Taken together, these figures show that the nuclear club, contrary to common perception, is not simply a bipolar competition. It is a collection of powers with different doctrines, interests and levels of transparency.
But there is an important point in these figures: not all of these warheads are necessarily ready for launch. SIPRI estimates that, of the 12,187 warheads, about 9,745 are held in military stockpiles for potential use, while roughly 4,012 are in the custody of operational forces and deployed with aircraft and missiles. In addition, between 2,100 and 2,200 deployed warheads are maintained at a high operational alert level. Almost all of these belong to Russia and the United States, with a smaller share belonging to France and the United Kingdom.
These figures take on greater significance when viewed against the backdrop of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In August 1945, the US atomic bombings of the two Japanese cities resulted in the deaths of more than 200,000 people during the attacks and in their aftermath. Yet eight decades later, humanity still possesses more than 12,000 nuclear warheads. The difference between today and 1945 is not merely a matter of numbers. Missile systems, submarines, bombers and new technologies have made the delivery and use of nuclear weapons more complex and, in some scenarios, faster.
The greater contradiction, however, lies in the standards of oversight and accountability. Israel, with an estimated 90 warheads, is considered the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, although Israel itself neither officially confirms nor denies possessing nuclear weapons. It is not a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and, unlike non-nuclear-weapon states that are party to the treaty, is not subject to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s comprehensive safeguards agreement. Some of Israel’s nuclear activities have been placed under item-specific safeguards agreements.
This is where the central political question arises: How is it possible that, in the Middle East, a country possessing a nuclear arsenal can remain outside the NPT framework and maintain no transparency about the actual scope of its nuclear capabilities, while other countries in the region face the most severe political, security and economic pressure over the slightest ambiguity in their nuclear programs? This question shifts the debate from “nuclear weapons” to the issue of fairness in the nonproliferation regime.
SIPRI has also warned that the world has entered a phase in which the decline in nuclear arsenals could be reversed. The pace of dismantling older warheads is slowing, while the deployment of new weapons and modernization programs are increasing. The expiration of the US-Russia New START treaty in February 2026 has further added to uncertainty over the future of strategic arms control.
Under these circumstances, the issue is not simply about counting warheads. The real question is who possesses nuclear weapons, who defines the right to possess them for themselves, and who is punished for not having them.
If global security is truly based on nuclear nonproliferation, the same rule must apply equally to all countries. Otherwise, what remains is not a fair security system, but a double-standard architecture in which the large arsenals of dominant powers are treated as normal, while the nuclear files of others are turned into global crises.
NOURNEWS