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New Report: 'Squandered - 2021 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending'

  • Alicia Sanders-Zakre

Recent anti-nuclear protest in Coventry

Recent anti-nuclear protest in Coventry

In its new report, 'Squandered: 2021 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending,' the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) shows that in 2021, the year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, nine nuclear-armed states spent $82.4 billion on their nuclear weapons. This is an increase from 2020 spending.

The report shows that not just governments are responsible for squandering resources on weapons of mass destruction. Companies, lobbyists and think tanks were all part of a vicious cycle of spending, lobbying, and more spending on nuclear weapons in 2021.

It has found that private companies were awarded at least $30.2 billion in new nuclear weapons-related contracts in 2021 - more than double the $14.8 billion awarded in 2020. Those companies then spent $117 million lobbying decision makers and between $5.5-$10 million funding most of the major think tanks that research and write on nuclear weapons.

$157,000 per minute…that's how much the nine nuclear-armed states spent on their nuclear weapons in 2021 during a continuing global pandemic and only months before Russia began assembling troops on the border with Ukraine. In total, the nine nuclear armed states spent $82.4 billion on nuclear weapons in 2021, which represents an inflation-adjusted increase of $6.5 billion from 2020.

Companies in France, the United Kingdom and the United States were awarded $30 billion in new contracts (some spanning decades into the future), twice as much as they received in 2020. ICAN says: "As companies throw money at lobbyists and researchers to assert the continued relevance and value of nuclear weapons, the record shows the inability of weapons of mass destruction to address modern security challenges - and the legitimate fear that they can end civilisation as we know it."

In 2017, ICAN won the Nobel Peace Prize for its work to get governments to negotiate the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. On October 24, 2020, the Treaty reached the required 50 states parties for its entry into force. On January 22, 2021 the treaty officially entered into force, cementing a categorical ban on nuclear weapons, 75 years after their first use.


Full report can be read at: www.icanw.org/squandered_2021_global_nuclear_weapons_spending_report

Nuclear Ban Week is being held in Vienna 18-23 June. Events can be joined online. https://vienna.icanw.org/

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