World’s nine nuclear powers spend $119 billion in nuclear weaponry, as treaties expire and threats of annihilation increase
While the world’s attention fixates on isolated conflicts and political theater, the nine nuclear powers of the world are quietly orchestrating a global catastrophe with a level of spending that mocks our greatest humanitarian needs. The rulers of the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea are collectively pouring a record-breaking $119 billion annually into upgrading and expanding their nuclear arsenals - a 19 percent increase over the preceding year, as the last remaining arms control treaties crumble into irrelevance.
This is not a story of defense, but of reckless offensive posturing, a modern-day arms race that sees the United States alone embarking on a $1.7 trillion, decades-long buildup while simultaneously threatening other nations with nuclear destruction.
Key points:
- Global nuclear weapons spending reached an all-time high of $119 billion in 2025, with the US accounting for more than half of that total.
- The last remaining US-Russia arms control treaty, New START, expired in February 2026, removing the final guardrails on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals.
- The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 89 seconds to midnight, the most dangerous setting in its history, reflecting the heightened risk of global catastrophe.
- Russian officials have issued at least 135 nuclear threats since early 2022, while US and North Korean leaders have also engaged in nuclear saber-rattling.
- A majority of the world’s nations have signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, but none of the nine nuclear-armed states have joined, highlighting their commitment to maintaining these weapons of mass extermination.
A collapse of treaties and a rise in threats
The structural framework that once provided a fragile check on nuclear proliferation has effectively collapsed. The New START treaty, the last binding agreement limiting the strategic nuclear warheads of the United States and Russia, expired in February of this year. While both nations have continued to observe the numerical limits, the legal and diplomatic bedrock has eroded, and Russia has even suspended its participation in the treaty, signaling a willingness to abandon all constraints.
This unraveling is not happening in a vacuum; it is accompanied by a disturbing surge in explicit nuclear threats. Russian officials have publicly issued over 130 nuclear threats in the past three years, with President Vladimir Putin personally responsible for a quarter of them. The United States, under the current administration, has matched this rhetoric with its own bellicose language and policy shifts, including signaling a willingness to restart nuclear testing and dropping references to denuclearizing North Korea from its national security strategy.
The $119 billion gamble and the forgotten treaty
The sheer scale of financial resources being diverted into these weapons is staggering, representing a clear choice by world leaders to prioritize tools of annihilation over human survival. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization, reported that the $119 billion spent in 2025 could have covered the regular United Nations budget for 32 years or solved global hunger for the past three years.
This spending is not for maintenance, but for a new generation of weapons. The US is investing in new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missiles expected to remain operational past the year 2100, while the UK and France are extending the life of their arsenals well into the next century. This long-term planning starkly contradicts any stated desire for a world free of nuclear weapons. In a stunning display of the divide between the nuclear haves and have-nots, the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has been signed by 100 countries, a majority of the world’s nations, but is steadfastly ignored by the nine nuclear powers who are actively building the very weapons the treaty outlaws.
The situation is a crisis of leadership and trust. The rulers of the nuclear powers are nationalistic, militaristic, and authoritarian, with no interest in disarmament, even as the Doomsday Clock sits at a terrifying 89 seconds to midnight. The lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the warnings of Albert Einstein and Edward R. Murrow, and the mass public protests of the Cold War era have been forgotten. Instead of working in tandem to restore trust and dismantle these global threats, these governments are accelerating the march toward a conflict that would, as UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned, be a “one-way road to annihilation". The only path away from this abyss lies in a revival of the antinuclear movement and a wholesale rejection of leaders who continue to gamble with the future of life on Earth.
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