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treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons
War Profiteers Benefit as Nuclear Weapons Spending Soared Above $100 Billion Last Year
New analysis reveals that global nuclear weapons spending "could feed all of the 345 million people currently facing the most severe levels of hunger globally, including starvation, for nearly two years."
Jun 13, 2025
The world's nine nuclear-armed nations spent more than $100 billion on their atomic arsenals last year—up 11% from 2023—with the United States accounting for both the largest share and biggest increase in expenditures, a report published Friday by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons reveals.
The new ICAN analysis identifies a $9.9 billion increase in global nuclear weapons spending in 2024, with the U.S.—the only country to ever carry out a nuclear attack on another nation—spending $56.8 billion, more than the combined expenditures of the eight other countries with nukes. In addition to the U.S., Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea have nuclear arsenals. The $5.3 billion annual spending increase by the U.S. was also more than any other nuclear power.
All that spending on doomsday weapons padded the profits of major arms makers. According to the report:
In 2024, at least twenty-six companies working on nuclear weapons development and maintenance held significant contracts for their work. These companies earned at least $43.5 billion in the year and hold at least $463 billion in outstanding contracts. In 2024, new contracts worth around $20 billion were awarded to these companies. The companies identified in this report paid lobbyists in France and the United States more than $128 million to represent their interests last year. They also had 196 meetings with high-level U.K. officials including 18 with the prime minister's office in 2024.
"Nuclear-armed countries could have paid the United Nations' budget 28 times with what they spent to build and maintain nuclear weapons in 2024," the report states. "They could feed all of the 345 million people currently facing the most severe levels of hunger globally, including starvation, for nearly two years."
Noting that "98 countries have signed, ratified, or acceded" to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), ICAN—which was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work on the landmark accord—asserted that "it is up to each government, and the citizens of that country, to decide which path they will choose."
ICAN asserted that the stakes are higher than at any time in a generation.
"With two major wars involving nuclear-armed states in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as nuclear tensions escalating between India and Pakistan and on the Korean Peninsula, the risk that nuclear weapons could be used in combat is widely regarded as the highest it has been since the Cold War and possibly ever," the group warned Friday in a separate statement. "In response, the nuclear-armed states are clinging to the doctrine of deterrence which is based on brinkmanship and the threat to use nuclear weapons, exacerbating the risk of conflict."
Susi Snyder, ICAN program coordinator and report co-author, said Friday that the global crisis of nuclear proliferation and out-of-control spending can be solved, but that "doing so means understanding the vested interests fiercely defending the option for nine countries to indiscriminately murder civilians."
"The good news," she added, "is a majority are going in another direction. Ninety-eight states, supported by over 700 civil society organizations, have either signed, ratified, or directly acceded to the... TPNW that came into force four years ago."
This year's ICAN report highlighted the "hidden costs" of nuclear weapons.
"It's an affront to democracy that citizens and lawmakers in countries that boast of their democratic credentials are not allowed to know that nuclear weapons from other countries are based on their soil or how much of their taxes is being spent on them," ICAN policy and research coordinator and report co-author Alicia Sanders-Zakre said. "It is time for these democratically elected leaders to heed the call of their people to remove nuclear weapons from their countries and work for their total elimination."
Responding to the report, Oliver Meier, policy and research director at the European Leadership Network, a London-based think tank, said, "At a time when better transparency and accountability of nuclear weapon states range high on the agenda of many non-nuclear weapon states, the absolute secrecy and lack of engagement on the costs of Russian and NATO nuclear sharing arrangements are an anachronism."
"In democratic societies, legislators and other stakeholders must have opportunities to review these arrangements, including relevant expenditure," he added.
The day before ICAN published the report, Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, was joined by retired military officers and national security experts in Washington, D.C. for the launch of Up In Arms, a four-year campaign "to bring common sense to the Department of Defense and the country's budgetary bottom line."
"There will be no peace, there will be no security, until we start using our resources to provide for the needs of our people at home and around the world," said Cohen. "And we have the money to do it, at no additional taxpayer expense. If we take half the money budgeted for the Pentagon and invested in the things people need and want, the American Dream can become a reality again."
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No One Wins When Nuclear-Armed States Believe That ‘We Can’t Lose’
Any conflict risks going nuclear if one of the belligerent parties choses to use their ultimate weapon rather than accept the possibility of defeat.
Mar 28, 2025
Nations engaged in wars with conventional weapons are not likely to hold back from using their most powerful weapons if they believe they are losing the war, and for too many countries in our world the most powerful weapons are nuclear. Countries committed to fighting a conventional war are also likely to be committed to the meme of “We Can’t Lose.”
A nuclear war could begin with the losing side in a conventional war making use of a small local tactical nuclear weapon to destroy the supply lines of its enemy. But once one side uses such a weapon the other side will feel that it too must engage with its most powerful weapons. Frustration is likely to set in when it appears that restricting such weapons to the immediate battlefield of the war is not sufficient to win. It might then be seen as necessary to destroy the enemy’s airfields and the power centers in its capital with longer range, more powerful nuclear weapons.
Just such a sequence of escalation in the use of nuclear weapons from tactical use in a local battlefield to strategic use in the destruction of an enemy’s cities was shown to be likely in a 1983 simulation described in a recent article by William Langewiesche in The New York Times Magazine. The simulation was large scale and involved much of the U.S. defense establishment. The simulation began with a conventional war between Russia and the West on the fields of Poland and East Germany. As it began to appear that the West was losing and the Netherlands was threatened, the West initiated the use of small tactical nuclear weapons that it fired onto the enemy’s supply lines in the local battlefield. Russia followed suit. Within a few days the airfields behind the frontlines from which the planes dropping the tactical weapons took off were struck with larger nuclear weapons. Finally, strategic weapons were used against the capitals of Western Europe and Russia.
One fears the near inevitability that one or more of the current wars in our world will end in nuclear war, the accompanying nuclear winter, and the possible end of human life on Earth.
The results surprised those who participated in the simulation. The conclusion was that a nuclear war cannot be controlled.
Our world has many local conflicts such as the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East that involve nuclear powers. This is in addition to major geostrategic conflicts between the nuclear powers of U.S., Russia, and China. All of these conflicts have the potential of becoming nuclear.
Russia, for example, has warned the West that it will use a nuclear weapon in its war with Ukraine if it believes it is losing the current war with conventional weapons. Russia is thus telling the west that “we can’t lose.”
Israel has warned that it will exercise “The Samson Option” if it is in a war with its neighbors and believes it can no longer defend Israel with conventional weapons. The Samson Option involves the nuclear bombing of cities such as Damascus, Bagdad, or Cairo with nuclear weapons. More recently, Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu has raised the possibility of dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza. Israel too is thus telling the world that “we cannot and will not lose.”
It is likely that the United States too believes that “we cannot lose.” If it is in a war with China using conventional weapons and China is gaining the upper hand then it is quite possible that the U.S., with its triad of nuclear-armed submarines, bombers, and land-based missiles, would use these nuclear weapons. In fact, many in the U.S. defense establishment believe that a nuclear war with China can be fought and won by the U.S. Thus, the U.S. too believes that “we cannot lose.” Similar considerations by the U.S. would apply if it were losing a war with Russia.
Other states with nuclear weapons may also believe they cannot lose. North Korea has stated that it would not use nuclear weapons in a preemptive strike but would use its nuclear weapons if attacked, and recent events on the Korean peninsula suggest that war between the two Koreas is a real possibility. It also seems likely that if Pakistan or India were engaged in a conventional war and one side was losing, that that side would believe they could not lose and would initiate a nuclear exchange.
The likelihood of the use of nuclear weapons becomes still greater if other nations such as Japan, Brazil, Iran, or Saudi Arabia join the nuclear club in the interest of deterrence (no nuclear armed country has ever been invaded) and adopt the meme of “we cannot lose.”
All this makes one pessimistic. One fears the near inevitability that one or more of the current wars in our world will end in nuclear war, the accompanying nuclear winter, and the possible end of human life on Earth.
What can be done? It seems the only solution is the complete abolition of nuclear weapons as proposed in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that has now been signed by 93 non-nuclear states. Unfortunately, the nuclear states have not signed onto this treaty but should be encouraged to do so.
Skeptics will say that nuclear powers might sign on to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons but would hold in secret a few nuclear weapons so as to be able to dominate their enemies in a conventional war. That may well happen, but the vast reduction of nuclear weapons that the treaty would require and the absence of nuclear fear it would bring with it would make the universal adoption of the treaty a self-perpetuating step toward the world we deserve and must have.
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As the Doomsday Clock Ticks Closer to Midnight, Will Trump Make the Ultimate Deal?
All nuclear nations are following the U.S. lead in rebuilding their arsenals, giving President Trump, who has expressed concern over nuclear war, a chance to act if he will take it.
Jan 28, 2025
Eighty years ago saw the dawn of the nuclear age with the development and subsequent sole use of nuclear weapons when the United States dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing roughly 200,000, mainly civilian Japanese citizens. These events and the subsequent nuclear arms race driven by the myth of nuclear deterrence have hung over civilization to this day, threatening our very existence.
On Tuesday, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists unveiled its prophetic “Doomsday Clock” moving the hand to 89 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to midnight, representing the time at which our planet is uninhabitable and life as we know it is no longer possible. The Bulletin was originally founded in 1945 by the developers of the atomic bomb, including Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, and University of Chicago scientists to inform the public of man-made threats to human existence.
While nuclear weapons were the initial existential threat focus of the Doomsday Clock, risk multipliers are now included. These include the climate crisis, which reduces access to natural resources fueling conflict. Bio threats, like COVID-19 and future pandemics, are increasing as mankind and the animal kingdom interface ever more closely. In addition, the threats of bioterrorism, disinformation, and disruptive technologies—including AI—have made the risk even greater.
An important element to realizing this call to protect our world is the need to build the political will and give cover to members of Congress, many of whom who have been captured by the nuclear and military industrial complex.
Even at this time of great challenge, there is great hope arising from the international community as the fourth anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was celebrated last week. Under this treaty, nuclear weapons are illegal to stockpile, develop, test, transfer, use, or even threaten to use, and join all other weapons of mass destruction in that reality. The treaty emanated from civil society; impacted communities, including Hibakusha and victims of nuclear weapons, testing, and development legacy; international organizations; and government and elected officials. Today, with 73 nations ratifying the treaty, half the world’s countries representing over 2.5 billion people are on board with this nuclear ban.
The international movement that brought forth this treaty is the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace prize. This movement currently has 652 international partner organizations. The aim of this movement is to stigmatize, prohibit, and eliminate nuclear weapons.
In the United States there is a parallel effort endorsing nuclear abolition and the precautionary safeguard measures to reduce the risk of nuclear war until these weapons are verifiably abolished. This movement is called “Back from the Brink.” Similar to the TPNW, this movement has been endorsed by 493 organizations, 77 municipalities and counties, eight state legislative bodies, 428 municipal and state officials, and 44 members of Congress. It calls on the United States to lead a global effort to prevent nuclear war by:
- Actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals;
- Renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first;
- Ending the sole, unchecked authority of any U.S. president to launch a nuclear attack;
- Taking U.S. Nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert; and
- Canceling the plan to replace the U.S. nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons.
There is companion legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives, H. Res. 77, calling on the United States to adopt Back from the Brink’s comprehensive policy prescriptions for preventing nuclear war. This legislation introduced by Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.) is expected to be reintroduced soon in the new Congress.
An important element to realizing this call to protect our world is the need to build the political will and give cover to members of Congress, many of whom who have been captured by the nuclear and military industrial complex, to endorse this legislation and to engage the next generation whose future is threatened by policies that they have had no say in. Across the nation over the past year a student movement called Students for Nuclear Disarmament (SND) has been taking shape in our high schools, colleges, and universities.
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Talia’s Story
I am currently a senior at Tufts University, graduating this June. As I reflect back on my choice of major, I recognize that I first knew I wanted to study international relations as a freshman in high school. I am an avid news reader and am fascinated by different countries’ decision-making processes. I considered myself well read and up to date on current events. It wasn’t until near the end of my freshman year of college that I had even heard of the nuclear threat.
After hearing one lecture on the growing threat of nuclear war, I changed my major to focus on understanding the history of nuclear weapons and advocating for disarmament through extracurricular activities. I joined SND last year, and, working with other student activists, renewed my passion for this work. Through webinars, emails, phone calls, and social media, we have engaged with students across America to build our movement.
It is clear that my generation does not associate the nuclear threat with problems we face today. SND is not only an organization that raises awareness, but also an organization that empowers young people to take action and show their congresspeople that we are not blind to this threat. Successful student activism inspires students on the precipice of action to take the next step. SND has made great strides in 2024, and, with growing chapters and more student leaders, SND is ready to push Congress to take action.
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The timing of this Doomsday Clock unveiling could not be more critical. U.S. President Donald Trump, who professes wanting to make America great again, has expressed his concern about the existential consequences of nuclear war throughout his public life. Campaigning last June he said, “Tomorrow, we could have a war that will be so devastating that you could never recover from it. Nobody can. The whole world won’t be able to recover from it.”
With Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine and the Israeli-Gaza war, heightened tensions between Taiwan and China, and North Korean nuclear advances, the stakes could not be higher. All nuclear nations are following the U.S. lead in rebuilding their arsenals. The U.S. alone is estimated to spend $756 billion on nuclear weapons in the next 10 years.
Time and luck are not on our side. What is required is bold and new thinking about our nuclear realities. President Trump, the “great dealmaker,” is back in the White House with one last chance to make the ultimate deal for the future of humanity.
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