Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Year Book 2021
GS PAPER III: Security challenges and their management in border areas - linkages of organized crime with terrorism.
Context: China, India, Pakistan expanding nuclear arsenal, says Swedish think tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Year Book 2021.
Key findings:
- India possessed an estimated 156 nuclear warheads at the start of 2021 compared to 150 at the start of last year.
- Number of nuclear warheads globally appears to be increasing reversing earlier trend
- China is in the middle of a significant modernisation and expansion of its nuclear weapon inventory, and India and Pakistan also appear to be expanding their nuclear arsenals.
- The nine nuclear armed states - the S., Russia, the U.K., France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea - together possessed an estimated 13,080 nuclear weapons at the start of 2021.
- Russia and the U.S. together possessed over 90% of global nuclear weapons and have extensive and expensive modernisation programmes under way.
- “India and Pakistan are seeking new technologies and capabilities that dangerously undermine each other’s defence under the nuclear threshold.
- China’s evolving profile as a nuclear-weapons state was compounding India’s security challenges.
- Listing several Confidence Building Measures and other practical steps in this direction, it concluded that a robust, trusted, reliable, deniable back channel between the leaderships is the most promising means by which India and Pakistan could achieve greater strategic and nuclear deterrence stability.
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